Optic Nerve Image Contest Winner 2018 – Luther Konadu

BlackFlash Magazine is thrilled to announce the 2018 Optic Nerve Image Contest Winner – Luther Konadu from Winnipeg, Manitoba for the work Figure as Index, 2018.

Luther Konadu is an emerging writer and an image-maker. He is also a content contributor for the online publication Public Parking, a collaborative project for highlighting the working practices of emerging creatives. His studio activities are project-based and realized through photographic print media and painting processes. He acknowledges the legacies of these mediums and interpretive sites for generating new conventions and expanding fixed narratives. Konadu currently lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Konadu states:

My photographic processes and experiments ultimately seek to expand ways of viewing.  As part of one continuous documentary series, my work considers a discursive approach to self-portraiture; one that is less linked to autobiography but rather to a diverging collective identity. My work acknowledges the legacies of documentary photography as an interpretive site for constructing narratives that counter prevailing and dominant ones.   I am interested in how I can create an alternate past in order to imagine a different future of self. The resulting fragment images highlight my close community of family of friends in my personal studio as we create a document of self on our own terms. I use strategies including re-photography and collaging to pronounce the illusory photographic surface while breaking the image away from a bigger reality as opposed to a representation of it. 

Honourable Mentions

Farihah Shah (Bradford, ON) – Farihah Shah is a 28 year old emerging lens-based artists originally from Edmonton, Alberta and now based in Bradford, Ontario. She holds a Bachelors in Human Resources Management from York University and a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Photography with a minor in Integrated Media from OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario. Her practice seeks to be a catalyst for social change through an array of conceptual, street, and studio photography, time-based film work, multi-media installations and performance based works. She explores issues of racial identity, constructed and natural landscapes, personal and collective memory, and private and public spaces. Her work has been displayed in galleries in Finland, Germany, and Canada and she has recently been a featured artist on CBC Arts’ online series This Art Works.

Using self-portraiture and simple installations, Billie Said “Strange Fruit” aims to respond to the current Black Lives Matter movement and past civil rights movements advocating for justice and equality whilst commenting on the lack of representation of black bodies in the history of photography. The series reflects on the significant history of still-life photography and botanical objects and challenges the viewer to elevate fragmented or disenfranchised bodies to the same respect as the popularly photographed succulent. The series lends its name from the 1930s poem “Strange Fruit” which was popularized by Billie Holiday. The poem speaks about the widespread practice of lynching in the American South. Despite the literal disappearance of this act, the figurative and systematic lynching of black bodies from the contemporary socio-political discourse remains. The series is dedicated to my Uncle Bob (Robert E. Lee III 1942-2017), a former Black Panther.

The Sun’s Rays Do Not Burn Until Brought To A Focus is a body of photographic objects that explore light, space, memory, fragility, and the history of photography. Using medium format film, transparent film, plexiglass, and other fragile materials, I attempt to explore light and space as it relates to memory, perception, and viewer experience. Drawing upon fiction and literature references on memory and light, this work considers the poetic metaphors of light as emotional and psychological indicators of space and time. Photographs appear to float and sway, bend and curl, reflect and absorb light, and rest somewhere in-between motion and stasis, presence and absence, material and immaterial. Vulnerable to dust and scratches, light and humidity, air and moisture, these works continually change within their environments; offering a temporal experience of photography for the viewer. As the sun moves across the sky, or a sudden gust of wind sweeps the photographs aside, each work is animated with their own ephemeral rhythm.

2018 Optic Nerve Image Contest Judges

Joi T. Arcand is a photo-based artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in central Saskatchewan —Treaty 6 Territory— and is currently based in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 2005, and has exhibited across Canada, the United States, and Europe. In 2006, along with Felicia Gay, she co-founded the Red Shift Gallery, a contemporary Indigenous art gallery is Saskatoon. In 2012, she combined her love of art, design, and publishing to create kimiwan ‘zine, a magazine for Indigenous artists and writers. Arcand has recently been shortlisted for the annual Sobey Art Award.

John G. Hampton is a curator and artist currently living in Treaty 2 Territory, Manitoba. He is the Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba and Adjunct Curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. He holds a Masters of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies (2014) from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Visual Arts (2009) from the University of Regina. His recent research includes the ontologies of stones, humorous minimalism, critical virtuality, and Indigenous relationality. He is a citizen of Canada, the United States, and the Chickasaw Nation.

Kara Uzelman is a visual artist. Since graduating with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2004, Uzelman’s work has been included in DIY exhibitions, artist-run centres, museums, commercial galleries, and art fairs across Canada and Europe. She has received numerous awards, and has attended residencies at The Klondike Institute of Art (Dawson City, CA), Triangle (Marseille, FR), Maines D’oevres (Paris, FR), Mercer Union (Toronto, CA), and Les Atelier des Arques (Les Arques, FR). Uzelman currently lives and works in the rural farming community of Nokomis, Saskatchewan.