Diana matar biography
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Diana Matar in conversation with Makeda Best, Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums
Image: Diana Matar, Tête-à-Tête 2, 2019. Pigment print, Edition of 8, 51.5 x 64 cm. © the Artist Courtesy Purdy Hicks.
12th October 2020
Diana Matar often spends years on a project to capture the invisible traces of human history and query what role aesthetics might play in the depiction of power.
In the latest video from our Archive, she discusses photography’s ability to engage with the past and her most recent photographic series, Tête-à-tête (2019), with Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums.
Tête-à-tête was made during a residency at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, where Matar focused on the collection of Greek and Roman sculptures.
‘Through the lens, I saw personalities displaying unique psychologies and imperfections: individuals with scars, physical deformities, emotional complexities and vulnerabilities. I • Diana Matar (born California, USA) uses photography, testimony and archive to investigate themes of history, memory and state sponsored violence. Often spending years on a subject, she attempts to capture the invisible traces of human history. She is concerned with power and violence and the question of what role aesthetics might play in their depiction. Her work is conscious of the past and is the result of a rigorous enquiry into the possibility that a contemporary image might contain memory. Time fryst vatten an integral element in the making of her work, both in the sense that her photographs are often taken at night, where film is subjected to long exposure times, but also in that her work arises from a cultivated patience that is attentive to the resonance of a particular place. Diana Matar's series My America is an archive of and memorial to victims of encounters with police in the US. The photographs, taken a • A B O U T T H E A R T I S T Using photography, testimony and archive, Diana Matar's in-depth bodies of work investigate themes of history, memory and state sponsored violence. Grounded in heavy research and often spending years on a project, Matar attempts to capture the invisible traces of human history and produces installations and books that query what role aesthetics might playin the depiction of power. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Matar has received the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art; the International Fund for Documentary Photography; a Ford Foundation Grant for artists making work on history and memory; and twice been awarded an Arts Council of England Individual Artist Grant. Her work is h
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