I am part of Women Photograph 2021 Year in Pictures
My recent image, 1492: La Niña, la Pinta, y la Santa María was chosen for the Women Photograph 2021 Year in Pictures. Every year, Women Photograph showcases 100 images of their members across the globe, highlighting assignment work, long term documentary projects, and personal stories from the past year. I was especially pleased that this image is probably the only one that doesn't exactly fit in the photojournalism/documentary category, but it was still included in this powerful group of images that raise innumerable humanitarian issues. The selection was done by Tanvi Mishra, a Delhi-based photo editor, curator, and writer. https://www.womenphotograph.com/news/2021-year-in-pictures
Caption: "A naked, mixed-race woman with long dark hair is leaning on a table. On her back we see the three caravels in which Columbus arrived: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, navigating her body. The woman symbolizes the native and wild America. This image represents a contemporary version of the colonization of our bodies, our land, and our minds."
La Ciudad en las Nubes receives the Michael Reichmann Project Grant Award!
Last week I received the great news that La Ciudad en las Nubes was granted the Michael Reichmann Project Grant Award. Photolucida offers this Critical Mass award made possible by a generous endowment gifted to them by the Luminous Endowment for Photographers – an organization created by the late Michael Reichmann in 2007 to provide financial assistance to deserving photographers and their projects – worldwide. This grant will allow me to continue working on Mi Pais Imaginado. So grateful to Photolucida for this honor and for the support my work is receiving. Please take a time to explore the other four projects that also received this grant from Vanessa Leroy, Daniel Mebarek, Andrea Orejarena + Caleb Stein and Olga Sokal. I am extremely honored to be among them. https://www.photolucida.org/cm21-michael-reichmann-grant-recipients/
I am a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50
¡Otro sueño convertido en realidad! Happy to announce I am a 2021 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 among a very diverse group of artists. The project selected La Ciudad en las Nubes is about decolonizing narratives surrounding the discovery of Machu Picchu and it's part of a larger work in progress. I am very excited about this project. To view the list of winners visit: https://www.photolucida.org/critical-mass/top-50
Selected comments by Photolucida Critical Mass jurors:
“This is such a beautiful investigation of how imperialist/supremacist thinking rewrites histories, especially in the pages of publications that have established themselves as experts on cultures they've purposefully rendered invisible. Your collage choices, redactions and overlays of images are not only visually stunning, but deeply contextual and really force the viewer to engage in this revision of history in an accessible way. Excellent!”
“This is work that claps back at the white dominant narrative in surprising and appropriately critical ways. I love how the frame in "The Framing of Machu Picchu" is the precise yellow of the National Geographic brand. This kind of work holds America and its nationalistic take on its own history accountable in ways that are necessary and important. I look forward to seeing more of this work. Have you considered this as a book?”
La Ciudad en las Nubes is Featured in Lenscratch
So happy and grateful to see La Ciudad en las Nubes featured on LENSCRATCH Journal. Please take a time to read this thoughtful interview by Daniel George. This project is about Machu Picchu, the myth of the discoverer and dismantling narratives of oppression. This keeps me going...
To read the full interview in two languages visit: http://lenscratch.com/2021/09/claudia-ruiz-gustafson-la-ciudad-en-las-nubes
I received a 2021 Mass Cultural Artist Fellowship!
I have no words to express how proud and honored I feel to have been awarded 2021 Photography Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. This generous grant will be used towards the completion and expansion of my ongoing work, a trilogy, Mi Pais Imaginado. More info here: https://artsake.massculturalcouncil.org/2021-artist-fellowships
Part 1: La Ciudad en las Nubes
Part 2: En Busca de un Mito
Part 3: Terra Obscura
Traces of Existence at Concord Art
This show is so beautiful, dreamy, whimsical and meaningful to me. Now showing at Concord Art. My work from Historias Fragmentadas in conversation with the impressive work of Tracy Spadafora. The pairing of our work was made in heaven. Grateful for the vision of Executive Director Kate James.
Crossing Cultures opens at the Fort Point Art Gallery
Crossing Cultures: Family, Memory and Displacement 3.0, my first curatorial project, opened this month at the beautiful and elegant Fort Point Art Gallery in the heart of Boston.
Crossing Cultures is an art exhibition about family, memory, displacement and identity from the point of view of five visual artists with roots in four continents: Astrid Reischwitz (Germany), Nilou Moochhala (India), Shabnam Jannesari (Iran), Claudia Ruiz Gustafson (Peru) and Vivian Poey (Mexico and Cuba). Through the use of vintage family photographs, and the use of different mediums: photography, mixed media and video, these artists uncover their family stories and create complex, multidimensional narratives to reflect upon what they have left behind while shifting countries and at the same time honoring and remembering family traditions and vanishing ways of life.
Maria selected to be part of Exposure 2020 at the PRC!
I am very honored to be one of the artists selected by Makeda Best, the curator of photography at the Harvard Art Museums to participate in Exposure 2020 at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, MA. The reception is this Wednesday, October 7th at 7pm via Zoom. Please come join me and ask any questions you wish!
Mass Cultural Council Grant
Last year I received a grant to work on a couple of art projects in my city of Framingham, MA. We were just about to start installation when the pandemic hit us. Now, I am happy to report that we are moving forward with the two art exhibitions! We have a new space: Project B Gallery at The Mill Contemporary Art in Framingham will be the venue for Under the Same Flag and Framingham: City of Dreams. We will also include a Community Write-In Wall where visitors can post poems, letters, notes, wishes and so on. I can't wait to bring this healing project to my community! Very grateful to the Framingham and to the Massachusetts Cultural Councils for this grant.
A Yellow Rose Project
This month was the launch of A Yellow Rose Project a photographic collaboration of responses, reflections, and reactions to the 19th Amendment from over one hundred women across the United States. I am extremely grateful to founders Frances Jakubek and and Meg Griffiths for inviting me to be part of this project. In my work I drew inspiration from the life of activist Inez Milholland who fought for the right of women and the oppressed. I am also very grateful to actress and activist Judith Kalaora for personifying Inez for my project.
My project Maria is a Photolucida Critical Mass 2020 Finalist!
Pleased to be a Photolucida Critical Mass 2020 finalist for my project Maria! These are some of the comments about my work from the Jurors:
- Beautiful and poignant body of work!
- Imaginative, playful body of work re-envisioning this particular person - nice use of material and image.
- What a wonderful act of commemoration and appreciation, a sacrament really. Like a sacrament, a great deal of the power comes from the fact that the central player is invisible, is present only in mind and spirit. You have no choice but to create Maria, suggest Maria, draw upon your memories of Maria. And this connects to a comment by the great French photographer Robert Doisneau -- "You must remember: to suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy."
- This series is gorgeously evocative, at once specific and personal while universal enough to welcome the viewer's imagination. The compositions, symbolism and palette are unique but still of a piece, expressing imaginative creativity.
Lenscratch published my interview with Ana De Orbegoso
One of the most wonderful things that happened to me this year was this conversation with Peruvian photographer Ana De Orbegoso in which we talk about art, life, family and much more. Please take a moment to read and enjoy our stories on LENSCRATCH, an outstanding venue for the visual art community. You can read the interview here: http://lenscratch.com/2020/08/
Historias de Tierra y Mar | Stories of Land and Sea
I am happy to announce that my solo show is now up at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, MA until August 28th, 2020. The staff really surprised me by creating an amazing virtual gallery experience that you can access here: Virtual Gallery.
We are hopeful that some sort of reception could still happen before the end of the show.
Maria selected by Fraction Media
I'm truly honored to have my newest series Maria included in the last issue of Fraction Magazine. Thanks to Leo Hsu for editing such a thoughtful selection of photos! Included in this issue are portfolios by photographers I have been admiring for a long time: Ross Mantle, Priya Kambli and Tomoya Imamura. View my feature here: Maria by Claudia Ruiz Gustafson.
My work En algún lugar is featured in Black & White Magazine!
Twenty years ago when I arrived to the US, I began collecting Black & White Magazine. I remember reading and re-reading the interviews and looking at the images over and over again. To see my work now featured in this gorgeous magazine fills me with joy. I am deeply grateful to writer George Slade for his thoughtful interview and interpretation and portrayal of my work. Read the essay here: Spotlight Feature.
