A pensive undercurrent runs through Clare Samuel’s work, and it carries into her interview To Behold and To Appear, with writer Lodoe Laura. Their conversation moves through Samuel’s portraiture practice across film and photography, delving into the ethics of the gaze and the quiet attunement that gives her work its distinctive, contemplative power.
Clare Samuel
Clare Samuel is a visual artist originally from Northern Ireland, now living in Toronto, Canada. She holds a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from Concordia University. Her work focuses on connection and distances between the self and other, as well as notions of social division, borders, and belonging. Spanning mediums such as photography, video, text and installation, her projects are often a dialogue with the idea of portraiture. She has exhibited internationally, most recently at OBORO, Belfast Exposed, and VU Photo. She teaches at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University. Her practice has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. Clare is co-founder and co-director of Feminist Photography Network, a nexus for research on the relationship between feminism and lens-based media.
Featuring the work of Arpita Shah, Clea Christakos-Gee, Jennifer Long, and Margaret Mitchell, this collection of images reflects some of the strange pain and beauty of being raised and moving through this world in bodies designated “female.”