Stories that Stir: Self-Reflection
Featured Program
Organiser:
Head On Foundation
Talk
Free Event
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Free, donations welcome
Self discovery and reflection take on many forms. Art is one way to reflect and four of our featured artists come together to tell us how they used photography to document and reflect on their lives – in the good times and the bad. Led by Monica Rosenfeld – public speaker, comedian, and PR extraordinaire. Monica joins Ramak Bamzar, Judith Nangala Crispin, Garrie Maguire, and Rachel Portesi as they discuss the stories that definied their lives and their photography.
A ‘Stories that Stir’ and Head On collaboration.
Register for the livestream event here.
Monica Rosenfeld is on a mission to facilitate human connection through powerful communication. She has worked in the media industry for over 25 years both in Europe and Australia, and has helped thousands of people communicate their story, to an audience of millions. Monica is the communication whisperer behind global corporations, government sectors, fast growth start-ups and individuals who are creating positive change in the world. She is also a stand-up comedian, performing in the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Comedy Festivals, Sydney Opera House, The Comedy Store and more.
Iranian-Australian artist Ramak Bamzar moved from art school in Tehran to practising photography in Melbourne, where she explores the paradoxes of her relationship with femininity, religion and culture. Bamzar’s Moustachioed women and rhinoplastic girls depicts two different generations of women living in the patriarchy and inequality in Iranian culture. Almost 150 years apart, both generations embody the struggle between tradition and modernity.
Garrie Maguire’s photography is complemented by his qualifications in sociology, gender studies and comparative cultural studies. He has been featured at several Mardi Gras festivals and is a four-time semi-finalist in the Head On Photo Awards, among other accolades. Maguire’s Indefinite immigration detention is a plea for Australians to reconsider indefinite immigration detention. Deemed an undesirable character, Maguire was taken from his Manila court hearing into the custody of the Bureau of Immigration in 2015 and held in the notorious Bicutan Detention Centre with the mental anguish of not knowing an end date. This project tells a 499-day story of trauma, introducing the viewer to a world they should hope to never encounter.
Rachel Portesi is a lens based multimedia artist from Vermont using wet plate collodion tintype, Polaroids, film, installation and 3-d imagery to explore the nuanced transitions in female identity relating to motherhood, aging, and choice. In Portesi’s Hair Portraits, she wrestles with her children growing up and change. These elaborate hair sculptures constructed in the studio are records of metamorphosises, from a past fractured self to an integrated, self-realised woman.
Judith Nangala Cripsin is a Canberra-based poet and visual artist, published author with a background in music. She is currently the Poetry Editor for the Canberra Times. Crispin a proud member of Oculi collective, one of the chapter leads of Women Photograph, and the 2021 Artist in residence with Music Viva. Cripsin has spent time working with tribal people in the Tanami desert. Her work includes themes of displacement and identity loss, a reflection on her own lost Aboriginal ancestry, but primarily it is centred on the concept of connection with Country. At this year’s Festival Judith presents Dangerous stars, a series of lumachrome glass prints that honour the lives of Australia’s dead flora and Fauna.
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