I Was Brought Here To Stay

Situated inside a photographic tradition while questioning the culture that bred that tradition, Nona Faustine’s practice walks the fine line between past and present, beginning where intersecting identities meet history. Exploring her family album in relationship to collective belonging, and self-portraiture in relationship to empowerment, Faustine examines the legacy of trauma, lineage, and history; her body becomes a channel for the known and unknown individuals who make up our past, present, and future. Reconstructing a narrative of race, memory, and time that delves into stereotypes, folklore, and anthropology, Faustine’s works are, in her words, “meditative reflections of history Americans have not come to terms with, challenging the duality of what is both visible and invisible.” Her talk will feature aspects of her practice that challenge the visual writers of history and summon viewers to question our own roles in making and unmaking historical wounds.

Bio

Nona Faustine is a Photographer Visual Artist and Brooklyn native. She is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts, and The International Center of Photography at Bard College MFA program. Her work focuses on identity, representation, and history. Faustine’s images have received world-wide acclaim, and have been published in a variety of national and international media outlets from the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, New Yorker, The Guardian, Elle Magazine, Artforum, among many others. Faustine's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally from the Ford Foundation, Harvard University to Tomie Ohtake Institute in Brazil. Faustine’s images are in the collection of the Studio Museum of Harlem, David C. Driskell Center at Maryland State University, Brooklyn Museum, and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg. In 2020 she will exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum. Faustine is a Finalist in the 2019 Outwin Boochever Competition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, on view fall of 2019.

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Presented by the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice and Berkeley Arts +Design