“As long as I can remember, I have felt very close to Africa. This is most probably due to the fact that I lived with my family in Kenya when I was a child. Yet, this very experience of closeness has also engendered contradictory feelings. While feeling to be a part of this world, I have also kept on being aware of the fact that I would never really be a part of it. Very soon, I have come to understand that I would always remain a stranger. In this way I try in my work to figure this ambiguity. You feel close but at the same time distant. And that is something that is most of times absent in traditional Western depictions of Africa, always clearly reflecting the interpretation and gaze of Westerners. I am trying to put that in doubt but at the same time, I am also that Western person so I can’t get completely free from that background. But I think doubt is always good. The play of shadows allows for multiple interpretations. You can read them at different levels. You should always be able to judge a photograph on different grounds, on political, social, emotional, but also on personal grounds.”
Viviane Sassen Viviane Sassen was born in 1972 in Amsterdam, and lives and works there. She first studied fashion design followed by photography at Hogeschool voor Kunsten Utrecht and fine art at Ateliers Arnhem. Sassen grew up in East Africa and has been taking photographs on the continent since her first return visit in 2002. Viviane Sassen was one of six artists selected for the New Photography 2011 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (27 September 2011 – 16 January 2012). Selected solo exhibitions include FORMA in Milan (2009), FOAM in Amsterdam (2008). Viviane Sassen has exhibited her work in France, Italy, the USA, Australia, South-Africa, Nigeria, the UK, Austria, Canada and Germany, and in numerous museum in the Netherlands. Her work is part of the collections of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland) and the Centre National des Art Plastiques (Paris). In 2007 she won the first prize of the Prix de Rome, and in 2011 she won the International Center of Photography in New York’s Infinity Award for Applied/Fashion/Advertising Photography. Her first book Flamboya was published by Contrasto (Rome, 2007) and her latest book Parasomnia was published by Prestel (Munich, 2011).
REPRESENTATION
http://www.stevenson.info/
http://www.wefolk.com/
BOOK
Parasomnia
with a short story by Moses Isegawa
publisher Prestel, 2011
ISBN-10: 3791345214
EXHIBITION
Krakow Photomonth
Viviane Sassen Parasomnia
12.05–12.06.2012
Pauza Gallery,
ul. Floriańska 18/5 (2nd floor)
Krakow, Poland
