Gallery of Photography Ireland is delighted to be hosting an in-depth conversation between artist Maria Kapajeva and Shoair Mavlian, Director of Photoworks. The discussion will focus on Kapajeva’s project Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear, which is being presented by Galley of Photography Ireland as part of A Woman’s Work, a programme funded by Creative Europe to examine experiences and histories of women’s labour through photography. Due to COVID-19 restrictions this in-conversation event will be happening online.
Using a multidisciplinary approach, including archival materials alongside her own images and installations, Maria Kapajeva’s Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear considers the history of the community surrounding a textile mill in Narva, Estonia, now closed, where members of the artist's family once worked. Kapajeva spent her childhood at the mill, drawing patterns and dreaming about becoming a fabric designer like her mother.
The story of this one small community is set in the larger context of post-industrial cities worldwide as the loss of their former roles leave them seeking new identities. Drawing on aspects of her mother’s work, her own unrealised childhood dreams and the failed ambition of industrial collectivization, Kapajeva underlines the complex relationship between personal and public memory that together form our historical narratives.
Shoair Mavlian is Director of Photoworks. She was previously an assistant curator at Tate Modern, London, focusing primarily on photography.
Shoair has a background in fine art photography practice and the history of photography focusing on the twentieth century. She has a strong interest in work relating to conflict and memory and emerging contemporary practice. She curated the major exhibition The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection (Tate Modern, 2016), and Project Space: A Chronicle of Interventions (Tate Modern and TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica, 2014) and co-curated Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (Tate Modern 2018), Conflict, Time, Photography (Tate Modern, 2014), and Harry Callahan (Tate Modern 2013). Recent independent curatorial projects include the exhibition Don McCullin: Looking Beyond the Edge for Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2016 and In Flux exhibited at Getxo Photo 2017 and Kanellopoulos Cultural Centre, Greece, 2015.