Monumental image by Sara Cwynar announced for BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation
This year’s commission by Capture Photography Festival shines a light on advertising tropes
Umi by Sara Cwynar. Photo via Capture Photography Festival
Capture Photography Festival presents Sara Cwynar’s Umi at the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation (944 Burrard Street) from April 1 to Mar 18, 2023.
SUBTLY SUBVERSIVE, photographer Sara Cwynar’s Umi will be featured on the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation’s façade, the Capture Photography Festival has announced.
For the site-specific installation, Cwynar created a monumental image, Umi, which features a woman taking part in a photoshoot, holding a pose that seems both relaxed and contrived. The Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based artist drew inspiration from imagery from a wide range sources including thrift stores, eBay, photo albums, art historical texts, and advertising for the slightly unsettling photograph.
“I thought of a giant, monumental image of a woman who is sort of having her own private moment, as if she is actually in a very small space, looking up at the sky and disregarding the gaze of the viewer,” Cwynar said in a release. “It’s also a play obviously on all the traditional advertising we see where women are posed forward facing, looking at us, as if they are there for our gaze.”
Curated by Capture Photography Festival executive director Emmy Lee Wall, Cwynar’s powerful photograph explores the ways in which the images that surround us shape our collective consciousness.
Capture Photography Festival annually commission artists to create new site-specific works to be installed on the Dal Grauer building itself, emphasizing the substation in the streetscape and reasserting it as an architectural icon.
The 2022 festival runs from April 1 to 29.
More information is at Capture Photography Festival.
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