FotoFest 2022 Curators, from left: Amy Sadao, Steven Evans, and Max Fields.
FotoFest 2022, the 19th iteration of Houston’s international biennial photography exhibition, will take place across the city between September 24 and November 6 of 2022. This next biennial will focus on “the ways contemporary image production and circulation informs and reflects global social, political, and cultural issues and movements,” according to a press release from FotoFest.
The 2022 biennial will have three co-curators: Steven Evans, FotoFest Executive Director; Max Fields, FotoFest Associate Curator and Director of Publishing; and Amy Sadao, former Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (and the former Director of New York City organization Visual AIDS).
“We are very excited to welcome Amy Sadao to the FotoFest Biennial 2022 curatorial team,” Evans states. “She brings her distinct curatorial viewpoint and a history of engaging diverse communities, creating dialogue, and utilizing art as a catalyst to examine the most significant issues we face today — be they civil, social, or intellectual.”
FotoFest Biennial
Sadao adds, “I am honored to join the FotoFest team to organize the next iteration of the FotoFest Biennial. It is particularly thrilling to extend my longstanding interests in photography, social movements, and the intersections of art activism and community-building projects by artists. I have long admired the way FotoFest and the city of Houston are presenting new ideas of contemporary art and artists.”
FotoFest 2020 was curated by Mark Sealy, MBE, Director of the renowned London-based photographic art institution Autograph ABP, and followed the theme African Cosmologies, which examined the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation. Although some of the events were allowed to continue through March 2020, programming was interrupted due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Installation view of Rotimi Fani-Kayode in the FotoFest Biennial 2020 exhibition African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, Houston, TX. Courtesy of FotoFest. Photo: Emily Peacock.
African Cosmologies Redux, a revisiting of the 2020 biennial, will feature artists, artworks, and themes that were part of the 2020 shows, as well as new projects exclusive to the 2022 exhibitions.
Next year’s biennial will feature international artists, photographers, and activists exhibiting in a variety of image-making modes including social media and computer-generated renderings, as well as news media and surveillance technologies.
FotoFest’s International Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists returns for 2022 as well, and the two-week-long event is expected to attract hundreds of artists from more than 30 countries, with nearly 200 national and international curators, publishers, gallerists, and photography industry leaders on hand for one-on-one meetings, making it the largest portfolio review program of its kind in the world.
For more information on programming and events, please visit FotoFest’s website here.
