Ffotogallery Exhibitions
This month, Ffotogallery champions two female international photographic artists in a double-headed exhibition, with showings at Turner House Gallery and their newer city centre space on Cardiff’s Castle Street. Iranian artist Amak Mahmoodian’s new project Where Time Stood Still will be shown at the former, whilst Lua Ribeira, hailing from the north of Spain, will exhibit Noises In The Blood in Castle Street.
Both artists return to Wales having already established substantial academic ties here: Mahmoodian completed a practice- based doctorate in photography at the University Of South Wales, whilst Ribeira enrolled on the university’s Documentary Photography course in 2012 after moving to the UK. Amak Mahmoodian, born in the city of Shiraz, is now based in Bristol. Her photographic work expressly navigates perceptions of female identity in the Western world and her native Iran.
Mahmoodian’s work illuminates the wider social issues faced by women in her homeland, having experienced them first-hand as she reached adulthood. She has spoken of how her experiences as an ‘insider’ show her how women are at the margins of Iranian society, in a revealing interview with the Financial Times. Having earned various awards and critical acclaim, Where Time Stood Still is a nostalgic retelling of her own past, representing the personal tragedy of being separated from one’s homeland. Through images of close relatives undergoing everyday, menial tasks, and the wider Iranian landscape, Mahmoodian conceals her melancholia behind historical masks and intimate portraits.
Spaniard Lua Ribeira’s colourful and personal work seeks to challenge the socially acceptable morals on which she was raised in the Spanish city of Galicia: sexism, patriarchy, modesty. Ribeira brings Noises In The Blood [pictured above] to Cardiff after publishing it in book form in 2017. The project, surrounding ideas of femininity in social spaces, specifically explores Jamaican dancehall culture in the UK.
Dancehall has often been seen as an area of “collective celebration and social debate”, and is determined by the use of Jamaican patois and sexually flamboyant performances. In her work, Ribeira recreates images from the British dancehall scene in participants’ homes, thus merging the extravagant and creative with the deeply intimate.
words CHARLIE COTTRELL
Turner House, Penarth / Castle Street, Cardiff, until Sat 23 Feb. Admission: free. Info: www.ffotogallery.org