VOID releases Sistermoon, a new book by Siri Kaur.
‘The passage of time is relentless, never ending, back and forth. The time that passes between us being born and having our own kids isn’t actually that long in the scheme of the universe, just a blink.’ – Siri Kaur
Artist Siri Kaur has been photographing her family for over 30 years and her youngest sister, Simran is the central focus of her forthcoming book Sistermoon. Kaur’s photographs are combined with those from her family archive to create an unconventional album, illustrating the cycles of life and transformation, whilst questioning who observes, who is seen, and who belongs.
Kaur’s biography informs the work. The book opens with a timeline of photographs from her mother’s traditional family, taken in the 1950s by her grandfather. Kaur herself was born into a cult—one image in the book depicts her parent’s wedding at the Happy Healthy Holy Organization, or 3HO in 1976. After Kaur’s family left the cult, her father established a rural living community in Vermont where her siblings remain today. Kaur simultaneously belonged to the family and was also an outsider. Her relationship with her family, in particular her sister, was formed and strengthened by creating photographs together. Photography enabled her to observe, catalogue and connect.
‘I remember when you were really little and I was a teenager, you would just look at me with complete and utter fascination because I had a woman’s body and you were a kid… I think for me when I was photographing you as a kid and young teenager, I had been through what you were experiencing not that long before. I remembered the feeling of my body growing and changing and I understood what was coming as you morphed from being a little kid into a woman.’
The images collectively form a freewheeling narrative with recurring family characters growing and transforming as the pages turn. Kaur’s use of landscape and the close relationship of nature embed a sense of magical spirituality in the images. A recurring motif of water and a cast of talismanic creatures—a horse, rabbit, owl, tiny snails, a frog— punctuate the portraits, hinting at fairytale tropes and the uncanny. Thresholds between childhood, adulthood and motherhood are approached, observed and pass. Universal experiences are shown through the frame of one family—made possible by the bond between two sisters.
‘It really also comes down to this way that I think we as sisters and artists here are trying to take the shame and take control of it ourselves. We are taking control of our own image. The control of it all is why I’m a photographer. You have a lot of trust in me and it’s one of the most meaningful relationships of my life.’
Siri Kaur is an artist and photographer who examines identities that occupy dualities, diversity, and contradiction. Originally from Maine, Kaur is currently based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and an MA and a BA from Smith College, Massachusetts. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues such as Aperture Foundation, New York; Camera Club of New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; Vermont Center for Photography, amongst others. Her pictures and exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, Art ltd., Art Practical, Artillery, Double Blind Magazine, Flaunt, Granta, The Los Angeles Times, Musee Magazine, The New Yorker, Purple, Wallpaper*, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She was a Professor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2007-2018 and currently teaches at UCLA.
Siri Kaur : Sistermoon
23,3 x 28,1 cm
Hardcover with Silkscreen
65 Euro
https://void.photo/store/p/sistermoon
