August Bradley
Vanessa Bahmani
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr
Charif Benhelima
Mel Chin
Celia Alvarez Muñoz
Ann Harithas
Nazar Yahya
Linarejos Moreno
Ernesto Leon
Joe Cardella

Artifactual Realities is a FotoFest 2012 exhibition of eleven artists. The exhibition consists of three photographers who are engaged in presenting realistic portraits and images from the Occupy movement and eight artists who create non-traditional or simply unusual artworks utilizing photography. As such, the exhibition as a whole mirrors the community spirit, diversity, and horizontal orientation underlying the Occupy movement.

The artists in this exhibition have developed an aesthetic approach that is consistent with their particular social, political, and spiritual interests. Each one deals with issues that are critical to themselves, to their intellectual milieu, and to their own brand of realism and idealism. From this standpoint one can safely predict an end to the twentieth-century era of a succession of styles. Like the computers they use to enhance or change their subject matter, or even brighten the content of their art, contemporary artists use a multi-faceted range of informational extensions, implying a horizontal approach to the creative process. Another aspect of twenty-first-century art is the use by artists of critical thinking combined with emotional references that together are beginning to shape the art of the new century.

Artifactual Realities takes society into account not simply as a reflection of the global community but also as an action-site, that is, as an artifact of communal exchange. This exhibition is dedicated to the work of eleven photographers/artists who, each in their own way, are concerned with issues of revolution, spirituality, and memory.

Curated by the Station Museum Staff:
James Harithas . Alan Schnitger . Kari Steele
Jordan Poole . Tim Gonzalez . Lia Harithas

Special Thanks for supporting Linarejos Moreno’s exhibition: 

August Bradley’s photographic series 99 Faces of Occupy Wall Street reveals the non-hierarchical perspective of Occupy Wall Street through dynamic portraits. Bradley’s images put a “face on a faceless movement,” which is still undefined, and is comprised of both activists and members of the public who are fed up with the economic inequality and corruption of the United States. Bradley currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

These outcries of change are visible through Vanessa Bahmani’s portrait series We are the 99%. Bahmani’s depiction of men and women, veterans, families, children, and even Wall Street employees contrast the negative media perception of protesters through profoundly personal hand-written signs. Bahmani lives in New York City.

Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr's protest photographs were taken in Moscow, Russia at a demonstration in Bolotnaya Square. The demonstrators demand a voice for ethnic Russians in the country’s politics and are marking the first anniversary of a violent nationalist riot just outside the Kremlin. Zemlianichenko Jr lives in Moscow, Russia.

The work Semites: A Wall Under Construction is a reflection on Charif Benhelima’s own background. Benhelima overexposed the photographs, creating an aesthetic of invisibility or disappearance that evokes the notion of memory/oblivion both of our cultural history and the artist’s own background. Benhelima lives in Antwerp, Belgium.

Mel Chin’s The Funk and Wag From A to Z uses images cut from a complete set of the 1953 edition of The Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia which he recomposes