Artist
Mafalda Rakoš
Mafalda Rakoš was born in Vienna in 1994. In addition to her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, she earned a degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology. She then moved to the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where she taught for a couple of years. Her work has been nominated and honored several times at international awards, exhibited in museums such as the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, Benaki Museum, Athens and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, as well as shown outside an art context at conferences on eating disorders or at the General Hospital in Vienna. Publications such as Die Zeit, Volkskrant Magazin or Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin and organizations such as The Wellcome Collection have published her images. Mafalda Rakoš lives and works between Vienna and Amsterdam, her third photo book A Story to Tell was published in 2020 by Fotohof.
A story to tell
As child of a network administrator and an art therapist, I have always been fascinated by vulnerable situations and the bigger, societal picture in which they manifest.
With a background in Fine Arts and Anthropology, another focus of my work is to curiously walk along the disciplines‘ intersections while taking up the role of a documentary photographer. In my long–term projects I seek close dialogical engagement with people through listening, speaking, observing, and taking pictures.
Being close to others and getting to know new things is what initially brought me to photography; yet, picking up a camera to represent something else imposes an ethical and intellectual dilemma. Triggered by this conflict, I’ve been interested in collaborative and polyphonic approaches to create documentary work for a long time, which eventually resulted in a strong emphasis on dialogue and shared decision-making with the protagonists in all my projects about eating disorders.
I’ve also been observing the embarkment of my photographic work onto performative and film-based grounds. Since 2019, I started to appear in these videos myself – the photographer capturing a portrait, the anthropologist asking a question, the observer, the initiator, the attentive listener. By doing so, my focus rests on mapping out context, on fathoming a network of subjective impressions and information. To structure loose ends and bring everything to conclusions, I rely on tools from anthropology such as transcribing, coding and mapping out research questions in a spiraled epistemic motion.
In the past years, I’ve been investigating how persons affected by unstable mental health perceived the pandemic, and put my finger on encounters and deep-talk with strangers in the intimate setting in their car, asking them generic questions like „What do you think the future brings?“, „What do you hope society has learned from the past two years?“, and „How happy are you at the current moment?“. It is this deeper insight into our collective psyche and mechanisms of capitalist reality that I am chasing, a search for answers to be continued.
All in this together
As child of a network administrator and an art therapist, I have always been fascinated by vulnerable situations and the bigger, societal picture in which they manifest.
With a background in Fine Arts and Anthropology, another focus of my work is to curiously walk along the disciplines‘ intersections while taking up the role of a documentary photographer. In my long–term projects I seek close dialogical engagement with people through listening, speaking, observing, and taking pictures.
Being close to others and getting to know new things is what initially brought me to photography; yet, picking up a camera to represent something else imposes an ethical and intellectual dilemma. Triggered by this conflict, I’ve been interested in collaborative and polyphonic approaches to create documentary work for a long time, which eventually resulted in a strong emphasis on dialogue and shared decision-making with the protagonists in all my projects about eating disorders.
I’ve also been observing the embarkment of my photographic work onto performative and film-based grounds. Since 2019, I started to appear in these videos myself – the photographer capturing a portrait, the anthropologist asking a question, the observer, the initiator, the attentive listener. By doing so, my focus rests on mapping out context, on fathoming a network of subjective impressions and information. To structure loose ends and bring everything to conclusions, I rely on tools from anthropology such as transcribing, coding and mapping out research questions in a spiraled epistemic motion.
In the past years, I’ve been investigating how persons affected by unstable mental health perceived the pandemic, and put my finger on encounters and deep-talk with strangers in the intimate setting in their car, asking them generic questions like „What do you think the future brings?“, „What do you hope society has learned from the past two years?“, and „How happy are you at the current moment?“. It is this deeper insight into our collective psyche and mechanisms of capitalist reality that I am chasing, a search for answers to be continued.
Stop&Go
As child of a network administrator and an art therapist, I have always been fascinated by vulnerable situations and the bigger, societal picture in which they manifest.
With a background in Fine Arts and Anthropology, another focus of my work is to curiously walk along the disciplines‘ intersections while taking up the role of a documentary photographer. In my long–term projects I seek close dialogical engagement with people through listening, speaking, observing, and taking pictures.
Being close to others and getting to know new things is what initially brought me to photography; yet, picking up a camera to represent something else imposes an ethical and intellectual dilemma. Triggered by this conflict, I’ve been interested in collaborative and polyphonic approaches to create documentary work for a long time, which eventually resulted in a strong emphasis on dialogue and shared decision-making with the protagonists in all my projects about eating disorders.
I’ve also been observing the embarkment of my photographic work onto performative and film-based grounds. Since 2019, I started to appear in these videos myself – the photographer capturing a portrait, the anthropologist asking a question, the observer, the initiator, the attentive listener. By doing so, my focus rests on mapping out context, on fathoming a network of subjective impressions and information. To structure loose ends and bring everything to conclusions, I rely on tools from anthropology such as transcribing, coding and mapping out research questions in a spiraled epistemic motion.
In the past years, I’ve been investigating how persons affected by unstable mental health perceived the pandemic, and put my finger on encounters and deep-talk with strangers in the intimate setting in their car, asking them generic questions like „What do you think the future brings?“, „What do you hope society has learned from the past two years?“, and „How happy are you at the current moment?“. It is this deeper insight into our collective psyche and mechanisms of capitalist reality that I am chasing, a search for answers to be continued.
Thana Faroq’s most recent work How Shall We Greet The Sun comprises a series of portraits and writing that reflects on the photograph’s ambiguity, power, and inabilities, offering viewers an unprecedented insight into the inner lives of women in exile. Faroq is also nominated by FOTODOK.
Gita Cooper-van Ingen’s work is informed by (female) subjective perspectives and how they relate to larger cultural, and aesthetic discourses. Her Models of Being an Accessory project traces patterns in the visual representation of women posing with iconic handbags.
Tina Faritfeh’s research engages with stories of migration, empathy, borders and bodies. In The Flood, a 4-channel video installation, Faritfeh questions how metaphors
linked to water have been used to dehumanise migrants and refugees.
Mafalda Rakoš’ Stop and Go project looks into Europe and its future through the highway system. Her practice spans film, still photography and text - but is also marked by performative and anthropological methodologies.
Finally, Cooking Potato Stories by Ana Nuñez Rodriguez asks: What can a potato tell us about ourselves? Through a mixture of delicately layered photography and archival media, Nuñez Rodriguez invites her viewers into the rich and entangled history of the potato plant.