Anastasia Sierra

The Witching Hour

ARTIST STATEMENT

I become a mother and stop sleeping through the night. Years go by, my child sleeps soundly in his bed but I still wake at every noise. My father comes to live with us and suddenly, I am a mother to everyone. As I drift off to sleep I can no longer tell my dreams from reality. In one nightmare my father tells me he’s only got two weeks to live. In another, I am late to pick up my son from school and never see him again. I am afraid of monsters, but I move towards them: we circle each other until I realize they are just as afraid of me as I am of them.Made in collaboration with my young son and elderly father, these images follow the logic of dreams, where we are trapped in a strange colorful world, playing an endles game of hide-and-seek in a labyrinth of love and fear. This work meditates on the shifting bonds between parents and children, where tenderness, intimacy, and play intertwine with guilt, frustration, and a constant sense of what could be lost.

ARTIST BIO

Anastasia Sierra is a photographer based in Boston. Her work explores the psychological complexities of motherhood, womanhood, and the domestic sphere, revealing profound vulnerability inherent in intergenerational bonds. Sierra’s photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Danforth Art Museum, Emerson Contemporary Gallery, Panopticon Gallery, Duncan Miller Gallery and Blue Sky Gallery. She is a winner of a 2026 LensCulture Art Photography Award, was named a 2025 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 finalist, and is included in the 2025 Lenscratch Student Prize: Top 25 to Watch. Her work is featured in the anthology Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood (teNeues Verlag, 2023) and has appeared in DEAR DAVE, Lenscratch, and Musée Magazine. Sierra holds a BA in Linguistics and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.