Karen Miranda Rivadeneira
Other Stories/Historias Bravas

Artist Statement:

According to my research, 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. Departing from this thought, I began questioning the role of photography and its relationship to memory, specifically what it intends to preserve. Since 2008, I have been working on Other Stories/Historias Bravas, a project where I revisit events from my youth that where never recorded. In this project, I re-stage scenarios taken from my memory and with the collaboration of my immediate family I recreate these memories. I chose to recreate memories that helped shaped my interpretation of the world and identity. These memories are either connected to local folklore or connected to my own family's tradition (and sometimes inventions).

Other Stories is an examination and re-enactment of personal memories. I draw from my bi-cultural upbringing to address issues that are universal, particularly in relation to migration, women's issues and the preservation of tradition while integrating them with contemporary life. The contexts in which these reenactments are staged are not meant to convey a romanticized vision of my experiences; rather they provide a means for reflection and a search for truthfulness.

About the Artist:

I graduated in 2005 from the School of Visual Arts in NYC with a bachelor in Fine Arts. That same year, I was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the Fondazione Ratti's Intense Visual Arts program with artist Alfredo Jaar, in Como, Italy. The following year, I travelled around South America and began working as a photojournalist. Due to the work developed in this period, in 2007, the Danish School of Journalism granted me a scholarship to study and develop a photography project in Denmark.

Since 2006 I have been working on projects that deal with identity and intimacy, I have been collaborating with native communities and my relatives as subjects for various photo-based projects. I have 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. Other Stories/Historias Bravas, her lifelong project, has been widely awarded and exhibited.

STEP UP 2010 is made possible with the generous support of Real Art Ways Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sandy and Howard Fromson, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, the Nimoy Foundation, the National Performance Network's Visual Artists Network, Lincoln Financial Group, Travelers and Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign.