Enlarge Your Memories (EYM) in partnership with Micamera is excited to present Playing for Keeps, a new photography exhibition by Molly Matalon and Caroline Tompkins.
This new show, curated by Jamie Allan Shaw, tells a contemporary woman’s viewpoint of romanticised Americana. With an all too familiar history of an older, male majority, photography that address’ the American landscape has a tendency to fall into the postcard era of automobiles, family values and the great outdoors. Now in 2019, our ideas about “How America Lives” have been expanded on by a wealth of cultural, political and artistic effort, thanks to the likes of Mad Men, Deana Lawson and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Molly Matalon (USA b.1991) holds a domestic gaze as she expands on the narrative of the housewife. What really happens behind closed doors? This is to be the antithesis of “Ladies home journal”. Portraits of home visitors, loaded still lifes and gazes from the windowsill, show us Matalon’s Americana, it is alluring and empowering, with a palpable sexual tension.
With an ode to Eggleston, Arbus and Outerbridge Jr, Matalon looks to subvert a traditional female position, and address the freedoms and power plays commonly associated with men both in this environment and within photography.
Caroline Tompkins (USA, b. 1992) provides the breath of the open road with one finger held high, free and fast, tall and brash, climbing the highest and getting too close to the fire, knees deep in the american landscape. With a wave to Stacy Kranitz and Maude Schuyler Clay, Tompkins allows us to denounce gendered stereotypes and shows us how girls can be girls. Tompkins work strives for a reclamation of the pseudo masculine american landscape and teaches our elders there is nothing to be frowned upon and there is not much that you should stay home for.
Together they embark on a image conversion that updates our romanticisms, filled with humour, powerplay, ownership and sexuality, attributes that more accurately define the contemporary American landscape.
WHEN:
22 May 2019 @ 19:00 – 29 June 2019 @ 19:00
WHERE:
Micamera
Via Medardo Rosso 19, 20159 Milano MI Italia
COST:
Free