Tova Katzman

46th National Artist’s Salon of Colombia: Inaudito Magdalena

SUELO: Bocas de Ceniza

Representing the collective Estudio Nuboso, we spenting 10 days in an immersive artist residency in Bocas de Ceniza, the 11km water break at the mouth of the Magdalena River inhabited by a community of kite fishermen. In addition to facilitating a kite workshop with the fishermen to show the public how to make kites from found river materials, we installed an ephemeral exhibition along Bocas de Ceniza with help from the locals who became an inherent part of the process.

This experience resulted in the photo series, Mouth of Ashes.

Photographs and wheatpasting: Tova Katzman

Cyanotype kites: Ana Berta Carrizo

Screenprinted flags: Wanda Von Bremen

Lo que nos llama: Identidad y territorio en Panamá

Un proyecto de La Junta Colectiva dirigido por Tova Katzman y apoyado por La Embajada de Estados Unidos en Panamá

Un grupo de mujeres sale a recorrer Panamá para indagar, mirar, y conectar: un proceso que se culmina con imágenes. Son La Junta, una colectiva que nació en 2020 para transformar la brecha de género dentro de la industria fotográfica. En Lo que nos llama: Identidad y Territorio en Panamá, muestran las historias poco representadas: los paisajes a la sombra y las vidas al margen del progreso en el país de tránsito. Grupos indígenas, personas migrantes y otras mujeres que resisten en las coordenadas del país: una franja ínfima de 75.517 kilómetros cuadrados partida al medio en nombre del progreso.

Mediante fotografías ofrecen una versión menos conocida de Panamá, reconstruyendo la memoria de una nación en rápido crecimiento. Revelan el país en el que estamos: uno fundado en el mito de la universalidad donde no hay espacio para todas las personas.

Texto de Sol Lauría

//

What Calls Us: Identity and Territory in Panama

A project from La Junta Colectiva directed by Tova Katzman and supported by the U.S Embassy in Panama

A group of women move around Panama while looking, investigating and connecting: a process that culminates with images. They are La Junta, a collective that was born in 2020 in order to transform the gender gap within the photography industry. In What Calls Us: Identity and Territory in Panama, they show us the stories that often go untold: the shadowed landscapes and lives that play out on the sidelines of progress within the country of transit. Indigenous groups, migrants, and other women who resist within the tiny strip of 75,517 square kilometers split in the middle in the name of progress.

Through photographs, they offer a lesser known version of Panama, reconstructing the memory of a rapidly growing nation. They reveal the place in which we find ourselves: a country founded on the myth of universality, where there is not enough room for all to be.

Text by Sol Lauría

2022

Hasta Aquí Era Agua // The Water Came Up To Here

Photographs in dialogue with stories from Santa Ana

The Water Came Up To Here is an exhibition that brings together the self portraits of five international artists with the testimonies in various formats of women in Santa Ana. Within the same space, they evoke a dialogue around the transformation of the body and territory. 

The photographs of Francesca Woodman (USA), Ana Mendieta (Cuba-USA), Aneta Grzeszykowska (Poland), Katalin Ladik (Hungry) and Zanele Muholi (South Africa) join together with the fabric, text, image and audiovisual pieces from the Santaneras Nelly Vera, Gineth Camargo, Xiomara Da Silva and Raysa Ramírez. 

To photograph oneself is a sacred act. “A confrontation with yourself”, says Nelly Vera, looking at the work of Francesca Woodman in her series ‘Self-deceit’, in which she reveals suggestive parts of her body. After seeing Ana Mendieta’s series, ‘Glass on Face’, Nelly understood a “silent sorrow” in Mendieta deforming her face against a sheet of glass. 

“It shows that as a woman, she is imprisoned within a stereotype that causes her pain”. This is how Gineth perceives the images from Aneta Grzeszykowska’s series, ‘Beauty Mask’, which reveal the grim process behind physical appearance. Making a self-portrait is an intimate dance with oneself and the camera. It requires taking control while letting go in order to fix a fleeting moment. “To become one with the sea”, reflects Xiomara Da Silva, responding to Katalin Ladik’s triptych ‘Painting the Sea’, which documents a performance with the water, invoking the various cycles experienced by a woman. Raysa Ramírez identifies with the “inner strength” Zanele Muholi transmits through their photographs. With a penetrative gaze that confronts the spectator, Muholi occupies space on their own terms in the series ‘Hail The Dark Lioness’. 

In order to get to know the women in Santa Ana who form the core of this project, it was crucial to hear their interpretations of the self portraits, a reminder that what we see in the photographs is a reflection of ourselves and our construction of reality. By sharing their stories with us, they became our guides as together we formed this project within the territory they inhabit. 

The objects created in collaboration with Nelly, Gineth, Xiomara, y Raysa, reflect a part of themselves and open other windows to access the exhibited photographs. Within the show, the pieces weave together the voices of the photographers and the Santaneras, contextualizing the exhibition in the territory that surrounds us. The Water Came Up To Here invites us to return to the root of artmaking, to connect with the universal process of questioning ourselves, our roles in society, and our surroundings.

Facilitated and curated by Tova Katzman and Daniel Molina

A project from Casa Santa Ana in Diablo Rosso Gallery. Panama City, Panama 2021

La Espera // The Wait

Waiting for the light to shift, a gesture to unfold, the shutter to close. Waiting often feels like a solitary state, the absence of action. When the waiting is removed, the moment becomes a dedication to the present, this herein lying at the heart of photography. 

Photography is composed of an accumulation of waitings without any specific formula. The author Hanya Yanagihara writes: “To be a photographer is to willingly enter the world of the lonely, because it is an artistic exercise in invisibility.”

Within La Espera, the images of eight artists reveal this state of limbo, the sense of neither here nor there, while sparking questions surrounding motherhood, power, belonging, and aging. The photographs are exhibited throughout Panama City in site specific locations that connect the work and the surroundings to the artist's relationship with what it means to wait. A QR code brings the spectator to the online gallery, where the show can be experienced in its entirety. 

Relying on public spaces to invoke a happenstance encounter with art, the exhibition is a portal into the space between virtual and physical, individual and collective, photographer and the camera. Viewed as a whole, the photographs conjure waiting as a perpetual state, synonymous to being human.

//

Esperar a que la luz cambie, a que un gesto se despliegue, a que el obturador se cierre. La espera se siente a menudo como un estado solitario, la ausencia de acción. Si se separa la espera, el momento se convierte en una dedicación al presente. Un retorno al corazón de la fotografía. 

La fotografía está compuesta por un cúmulo de esperas sin una fórmula concreta. La autora Hanya Yanagihara escribe: "Ser fotógrafa es entrar voluntariamente en el mundo de los solitarios, porque es un ejercicio artístico de invisibilidad".

Dentro de La Espera, las fotografías de ocho artistas revelan este estado de limbo, el sentido de ni aquí ni allá, al tiempo que suscitan interrogantes en torno a la maternidad, el poder, la pertenencia y el pasar del tiempo. Las fotografías están instaladas en lugares específicos de Ciudad de Panamá para crear una conexión entre la artista, el entorno y su relación con la espera. Un código QR lleva al espectador a la galería en línea, donde la muestra se puede experimentar en su totalidad.

Apoyándose en los espacios públicos para invocar un encuentro fortuito con el arte, la exposición es un portal al espacio entre lo virtual y lo físico, lo individual y lo colectivo, la fotógrafa y la cámara. Vistas en conjunto, las fotografías evocan el estado perpetuo de esperar como sinónimo de ser humano.

Curated by Tova Katzman and Val Schnack

Showcasing photographers from La Junta Colectiva

Grid Gallery, Panama City, Panama 2021