"While driving through a small town in Tennessee four years ago, I met two sisters who invited me on an adventure into their world. The landscapes they roamed became spaces for them to bond, rebel, tell secrets, & rest without observation."
Artist: Andriana Nativio
Project: As we rest in the shadows
One of our jury's favorite project, from the October 2023 opencall.
"This reminded me of my own girlhood & the summers I spent wandering through the lakes, woods, brush, & rivers with my girl cousins while we transformed the landscape into one that was just girl and just us. Fairy tales, urban legends, & our parents alike – told us the only thing girls would meet in nature was harm or a harsh lesson to be learned. While we were warned not to stray from the path, our curiosity & desire always rose above our fear. The light wove itself through the trees and pulled us into the depths, there we were free to disappear into the lush woods & dark waters where we were closest to ourselves. We felt we were the first to discover these spaces– maybe even the first people on Earth– or perhaps it felt like we were the last."
"From Genesis' creation story to the cautionary tale of Little Red Riding Hood,
and from the historical stigmatization of witches and healers to modern cultural references such as Twin Peaks and True Crime, these stories have cast a shadow of fear over women throughout history, creating distance between the natural & feminine. Within this body of work & through the use of black & white photography, I aim to break away from fear-inducing repetitive narratives, & seek to reconstruct both literary & photographic genres historically illustrated by men of their connection to nature or their attempts to dominate it. My work also questions why, while boys' behavior is commonly regarded as more weighty, young girls' actions are often dismissed as light-hearted– my work aims to provoke a reevaluation: why is the play of girls considered less significant?"
"My photographs meld the sisters' journey & my memories together in an attempt to return to my girlhood. Nostalgia continually reveals itself to be an immensely
potent emotion when making this work: a relentless and uncontrollable yearning to revisit the past, while I’m fully aware of its inaccessibility. I have found that our deepest fear was not rooted in the stories passed down to us, but rather, an
unspoken understanding existed among us, knowing we'd eventually have to leave this place. The light that drew us in shifted to shadows that loomed over us- a reminder of time itself."
© Andriana Nativio