In Transit
George Awde, Daniel Castro Garcia, Gohar Dashti, Tanya Habjouqa, & Stefanie Zofia Schulz
Curated by Peggy Sue Amison
Exhibition Dates: January 24 - March 15, 2019

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 24, 2019, 6 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 6 - 8 PM
Gohar Dashti in Conversation with curator Peggy Sue Amison
Artist Talk with Tanya Habjouqa: Thursday, February 28, 2019, 6 - 8 PM

PRESS RELEASE
Documenting the European Migrant Crisis from the Inside, Huck Magazine, Miss Rosen, January 23, 2019
5 to See This Weekend, Aesthetica Magazine, January 25, 2019
The Stateless, Placeless Desert, Lensculture, January 28, 2019
Go-to Galleries, Bay Area Reporter, February 1, 2019
”In Transit” SF Camerawork, Artforum, February 14, 2019
A New Exhibition Looks at the Experience of Immigrants Living Between Home and Hope, HAF, Roula Seikaly, February 15, 2019

In Transit is a multidisciplinary exhibition which focuses on the tentative, limbo-like experience of living between different cultures, and the stories of immigrants who traverse the no man’s land existing between home and hope.

This collection of photography and video works created in Germany, Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and Iran, is testimony to the struggle of day-to-day survival and the search to find a sense of normalcy and stability as experienced by immigrants and displaced peoples throughout Europe and the Middle East. Individuals from a broad range of backgrounds share their desire for a place to call home that will provide safety, dignity, and acceptance. The landscape of those fleeing from unsafe, economically depressed homelands towards dreams of a more secure future elsewhere is often filled with boredom, sadness, fear, apathy, and absence: loss of loved ones, familiar places, and citizenship.

Utilizing photography, performance, and filmmaking, each body of work examines the experiences of those thrust into a culture that is markedly different from their own. Through their narratives, the artists strive to disrupt accepted misconceptions about immigration and otherness in order to tell a more accurate story of human experience. Collaborating with their subjects, they give voice to those who must endure countless days of dead time while tangled in shifting bureaucracies in order to become more than merely ‘registered aliens’. These stories illustrate in the physical and psychological challenges faced, while additionally considering the deeper discussion of what constitutes citizenship in the wake of the enormous migrations to Europe.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

TANYA HABJOUQA (Jordan) is an award-winning photographer, journalist, and educator. Her practice links social documentary, collaborative portraiture, and participant observations. Her principal interests include gender, representation of otherness, dispossession, and human rights, with a particular concern for ever-shifting sociopolitical dynamics in the Middle East.

Habjouqa’s work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of MFA Boston, Institut di Monde Arab, and Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a founding member of Rawiya, the first all-female photography collective from the Middle East. She is also part of the Arab Documentary Photography Program, organized by Magnum Foundation, Price Claus Foundation, and AFAC. She is a member of the Noor Agency and represented by East Wing Gallery, Tanya lives with her family in East Jerusalem.

GOHAR DASHTI (Iran) received her M.A. in Photography from the Fine Art University of Tehran in 2005. After studying photography in Iran, she has spent the last thirteen years making the large scale of her practice concerned with social issues with particular references to history and culture through a convergence of interests in anthropology and sociology. Her practice continuously develops from life events and connection between the personal and the universal, the political and the fantasied. Gohar Dashti presently lives with her family between Iran and the United States.

Gohar has been awarded several scholarships and residencies including the MacDowell Colory, USA (2017), DAAD award, UdK Berlin DE (2009 - 2011). Her work has been exhibited around the world and is in collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum (UK), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (JP), Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston (USA), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City (USA), National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C. (USA), Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Chicago (USA), and Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (FR).

GEORGE AWDE (USA/Lebanon) was born in Boston of Lebanese origin. Drawn to alternative narratives, his work delves into issues surrounding citizenship, nationality, sexuality, focusing on people living on the margins of the city and their parallel realities between life in Beirut and elsewhere.

He graduated with an MFA in Photography from Yale University in 2009 and holds a BA in painting from Massachusetts College of the Arts, Boston. George presently lives between Dohar, Qatar; Beirut, Lebanon; and Cairo, Egypt. He is represented by East WIng Gallery and teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha, Qatar and is also the co-founder and co-director of marra.tein residency program in Beirut.

DANIEL CASTRO GARCIA (UK) was born and raised in Oxford, England, by parents who immigrated from Spain’s Galicia region seeking economic opportunities. As the son of immigrants himself, Daniel wanted to use his work as a photographer and filmmaker to help migrants/refugees have their voices heard.

Since May 2015, Daniel has revisited many of Europe’s refugee/migrant hotspots. The book, Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015 - 2016 was self-published in 2016, with graphic designer Thomas Saxby and producer Jade Morris. In 2017, Daniel received the British Journal of Photography’s International Photography Award and selected as a grantee by the Magnum Foundation Fund. Daniel was also awarded the 2017 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. Daniel is represented by East Wing Gallery. He lives and works in Sicily.

STEFANIE ZOFIA SCHULZ (Germany) was born in Germany and is a graduate of the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. Her photographic practice focuses on the documentation of important social issues and the human factor. Her work has been exhibited in Festival Circulations (FR) in 2016 and has been published in i-D Magazine, Emerge magazine, and Dazed Digital. She presently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

PEGGY SUE AMISON (USA/ IE) is Artistic Director for East Wing - a platform for photography founded in Doha, Qatar. As a curator, strategist, mentor, photographic consultant and writer, Peggy Sue has collaborated with numerous emerging and established photographers, festivals, and publications internationally in Europe, China, the USA, and the UAE. She is originally from San Diego, California and holds a BA in Art from San Francisco State University. Prior to her work with East WIng, she was Artistic Director of Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh County Cork, Ireland from 2001 - 2014. She is curator of In - Transit, which was initially exhibited at Gallerie Image, Aarhus, Denmark in 2016.

OUR PARTNERS
SF Camerawork is proud to present this exhibition in partnership with Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, OR) and San Diego State University Downtown (San Diego, CA).

Blue Sky Gallery: November 1 - December 30, 2018

San Diego State University Downtown: coming in April 2019

This exhibition is supported by Lensculture and the Bernard Osher Foundation.