Photo show opens Thursday at Real Art Ways during Creative Cocktail Hour

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira: Other Stories/Historias Bravas
Aug. 18—Oct. 9, 2011.
Opening reception during Creative Cocktail Hour: Thurs., Aug. 18, 6-10 p.m. Admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Press release

Real Art Ways presents Other Stories/Historias Bravas, an exhibition by Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira, who creates photos in which she reenacts personal memories from her youth with the help of her extended family in Ecuador.

An opening reception on Thurs., Aug. 18 from 6—8 p.m. will be held as part of Creative Cocktail Hour, Real Art Ways' monthly third Thursday gathering. Creative Cocktail Hour is from 6—10 p.m.; admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Miranda-Rivadeneira believes the act of remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. The more we "remember" an event the more we are likely to change it with time. In Other Stories/Historias Bravas she revisits events from her youth that were never recorded, restaging remembered scenarios with the collaboration from family. These memories, which shaped the artist's identity and interpretation of the world, are rooted in local folklore and connected with her family's traditions (some are invented).

Drawing from her bi-cultural upbringing, Miranda-Rivadeneira addresses emigration, feminism, and the conflict of preserving tradition while integrating with contemporary society. The contexts in which these reenactments are staged are not meant to romanticize her past experiences but rather act as reference points on her search for truthfulness.

Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira was raised in Queens, NY and graduated in 2005 from the School of Visual Arts in NYC with a bachelor in Fine Arts. In that same year, she was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the acclaimed Fondazione Ratti's Intense Visual Arts program with artist Alfredo Jaar, in Como, Italy.

She traveled extensively around South America in 2006, working as a photojournalist and her work garnered attention from the Danish School of Journalism, who granted Rivadeneira a scholarship to develop a photography project in Denmark.

Since 2006, Miranda-Rivadeneira has worked with projects that deal with identity and intimacy, collaborating with a variety of communities throughout the world as subjects for various photo-based projects. She has worked with the Mam (an indigenous group close to the border with Mexico) in Guatemala, with the Mandaeans (an ethnic group in the south of Iraq and west of Iran) living in Sweden, and with the Waoranis in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and lately in the Andean Mountains.

Miranda-Rivadeneira has received countless awards and has had her photography included in exhibitions around the globe. Most recently she was included in Here I am: Selections from New New Yorkers at Queens Museum of Art (NY). A few selected exhibitions include been included at MAAC (Contemporary Museum of Art, Ecuador), Newspace Center of Photography (Oregon), Front Gallery (Denmark), and En Foco at Calumet Photographic (New York).