April 18 - 28, 2024
From Houston Center for Photography:
“Houston Center for Photography is pleased to present The SIM Project by LIz Hingley. The exhibtion will be on view from April 18th to April 28th, 2024.
The exhibition gives tangible meaning to people’s virtual networks and explores how the images we create and exchange through our smartphones map our place in the world. It evolves through conversation and craft to shape new ways of sharing and archiving stories of migration. Through this process SIM cards emerged as “keys” that unlock ‘smartphone suitcases,’ to open up channels to loved ones and provide a portable sense of belonging.
In workshops, which combine analogue and digital photography with jewelry making, participants create unique glass prints from personal screenshots using a bespoke camera, and then frame them in metal.
The collection of SIM-scale artifacts in this mobile exhibition were made by over 170 participants from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Libya at free workshops held in 7 countries across Europe. New artworks will be made with residents of Houston in collaboration with the organizations PAIR and CHAT and added to the installation at HCP.
The SIM Project is led by artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley in collaboration with a team including Frank Menger of the Centre for Print Research at the University of West England (UWE) and architect Egemen Kizilcan. UWE and 4JET are generous sponsors of the Houston edition of the project.
About the Artists
Liz Hingley is an artist and anthropologist, born and raised in Birmingham, a UK city home to over 180 nationalities. Her interdisciplinary practice blends photography, sculpture and curation to illuminate and explore systems of belonging and belief that shape societies around the world. Grounded in ongoing conversations and collaboration with the people and places that her projects relate to, her works draw on the connections between languages, technology, and generations. She is the author of five books.
Liz founded The SIM Project in 2017 and is currently Artist in Residence at Kings College London. She has also held positions at Fudan University, Shanghai, The Migration Research Centre, University College London and SOAS University.
Frank Menger is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Print Research and Senior Lecturer for Photography in Foundation Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
He is interested in historic photographic and photomechanical printmaking processes, with a special interest in wet plate collodion photography and handmade photographic emulsions. Frank likes to combine analogue and digital photography, drawing on traditional techniques to de-construct process and practice and re-construct into innovative outcomes.”
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