UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Home/Land

Location:
126 Baxter Street, NYC

Curated by:
Zoraida Lopez-Daigo

Exhibition Dates:
November 14, 2024 - December 28, 2024

Opening Reception:
November 14th 6-8 PM

UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Home/Land

Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York is proud to present Home/Land, an exhibition curated by Zoraida Lopez-Diago, Baxter St’s 2024 Guest Curatorial Initiative Recipient. Featuring works of photographers Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani,  Home/Land explore themes of belonging, displacement, family, and the personal and geopolitical histories that shape their lives. 

The landscapes, wildlife, flora, and fauna depicted by Box and Soleimani become spaces for reimagining and inserting overlooked narratives into both the art world, and wider discourse. Food, in particular, emerges as a powerful symbol of both cultural identity and the commodification of people and the products they grow and harvest. As stewards of their respective legacies, Box and Soleimani keep nature and its sustenance as metaphors for growth, healing, and the preservation of place.

Samantha Box draws on her Caribbean heritage in her series Caribbean Dreams. Her evocative still lifes incorporate familial objects, food, plant life, while visually narrating stories rooted in her ancestral homeland. For Soleimani, wildlife rehabilitation serves as a metaphor for healing and care, employing the symbolism of birds to explore activism, and protest, while illuminating the shared trauma of families affected by conflict and war. Through their unique perspectives, these artists serve as talismans, weaving together complex narratives of migration and legacy, with the natural world acting as a site for regeneration and a keeper of memory. The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on these narratives and the intricate relationships between nature, identity, and the histories we both inherit and inhabit.

Support for Baxter St’s Guest Curatorial Program is generously provided by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.

ABOUT ZORAIDA LOPEZ-DIAGO

Zoraida Lopez-Diago is a photographer, curator, and environmental activist who is committed to centering the voices of people from the global majority. Zoraida has exhibited at institutions throughout the Americas and has lectured about her work at institutions including Harvard University, the Tate Modern, and La Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), among others. In 2022, she co-curated “Picturing Black Girlhood,” an exhibition exploring Black girlhood that included more than 80 Black women, girls, and genderqueer artists working in photography and film. In 2023, Zoraida co-curated, “Picturing Black Girlhood: Black Utopia” an exhibition examined connections between Black girlhood, open space, and the natural world. In 2016, Zoraida co-founded Women Picturing Revolution and, through this project, co-edited Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation: Another Way of Knowing, published by Leuven University Press (UK), and distributed by Cornell University Press. 

Zoraida is an environmental activist and is the co-founder of Conservationists of Color, a national affinity group for people of color working to protect land and water; she currently serves as Vice President of Communications and Development at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, one of the only food and agriculture nonprofits in the country working at a regional scale to transform our food system. Prior to this, Zoraida was the River Cities Director at Scenic Hudson, a NY-based environmental organization credited with launching the modern grassroots environmental movement.

ABOUT SAMANTHA BOX

Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. She holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from the ICP-Bard College and a certificate in Photojournalism and Documentary Studies from the International Center of Photography. Her work has been exhibited, most notably, at the Houston Center of Photography, the DePaul Art Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Light Work, the Open Society Foundation, the ICP Museum and at Le Rencontres d’Arles. Box has been an artist-in-residence at the Center of Photography at Woodstock, the Visual Studies Workshop and at Light Work, and was a Bronx Museum AIM fellow. She has been awarded a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Photography twice: in 2010 and in 2022, an En Foco Fellowship, and a Silver Eye Fellowship. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, the Louis Roederer Discovery Award, and the Prix De La Photo Madame Figaro. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston and the Harvard Art Museums.

ABOUT SHEIDA SOLEIMANI

Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism, melding sculpture, performance, film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking the complex power dynamics between the region and western nations. Soleimani’s work interrogates the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. Her photographs document constructed sets within her studio, in which repeating images carve out trompe l’oeil perspectives in a visual metaphor for the competing political narratives relayed by her source materials.

Location:
126 Baxter Street, NYC

Curated by:
Zoraida Lopez-Daigo

Exhibition Dates:
November 14, 2024 - December 28, 2024

Opening Reception:
November 14th 6-8 PM