Karina Aguilera Skvirsky engages the syntax of photography and how the meaning of imagery is changed in various contexts. In her "Backyards" series, Skvirsky literally brings the war home by restaging journalism photos from the Iraq war in a suburban context. In the selected image, she has taken an image from the New York Times and recreated the pose and gesture in a Lord & Taylor store parking lot in New Jersey.
A graduate of Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH), Skvirsky received her MFA from Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) in 1996. A recipient of numerous artist residencies, she has exhibited at Sara Meltzer Gallery, (New York), SFCamerawork (San Francisco, CA), Momenta Art (Brooklyn, NY), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), and the Center for Curatorial Studies (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), among others. An artist and educator, she has worked as a curator and is currently an assistant professor of art teaching photography and video art at Lafayette College (Easton, PA).
"Backyards" both brings the Iraq war home pictorially and explores how gesture crosses cultural and religious divisions. I am interested in both vernacular and constructed approaches to making and taking photographs. In Backyards, I juxtapose found journalistic photographs from the Iraq war with constructed photographs made at the crossroads of a suburban and rural landscape—a landscape that is lush and quintessentially American. By juxtaposing re-imagined gestures within an unmistakably American landscape, new narratives are constructed that position the "other" as subject while becoming absorbed into an American identity. Photographs are presented with their source images culled from the web and newspapers. In presenting both kinds of photographs together, viewers are brought into the process of enacting a moment in war.
Formerly the Exhibitions Coordinator for the American Federation of Arts (New York, NY), Sara Rosenfeld Dassel was hired by the PRC in 1997 as Director of Exhibitions. While at the PRC, Dassel organized numerous exhibitions, juried student and members' shows, and held monthly portfolio reviews for members.
After leaving the PRC, Dassel contributed photography features to Art New England, and worked as an independent arts consultant. In fall 2000, Dassel returned to the PRC to guest curate the show, Significant Other: The Hand of Man in Animal Imagery. Dassel graduated from Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH) and later received an MA in Art History from Hunter College (New York, NY). She has served on the Brookline Arts Commission since 2000, and was co-chair from 2002-04, during which time she helped found the Brookline Fund for Arts and Culture.
