ARTIST KAREN MIRANDA-RIVADENEIRA RE-ENACTS MEMORY IN OTHER STORIES/HISTORIAS BRAVAS

Iguanas, Photography, 20"x24", 2008-2010
Click image for larger version.

Opening Reception Thursday, August 18, 2011 | 6-8 PM
Part of Creative Cocktail Hour
$10/$5 Real Art Ways Members
Exhibition through Sunday, October 9, 2011

Hartford, Connecticut - Real Art Ways presents Other Stories/Historias Bravas, an exhibition by Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira, who creates photos in which she reenacts personal memories from her youth with the help of her extended family in Ecuador.

An opening reception on Thursday, August 18 from 6-8 PM will be held as part of Creative Cocktail Hour, Real Art Ways' monthly third Thursday gathering. Creative Cocktail Hour is from 6-10 PM; admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Miranda-Rivadeneira believes 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. In Other Stories/Historias Bravas she revisits events from her youth that were never recorded, restaging remembered scenarios with the collaboration from family. These memories, which shaped the artist's identity and interpretation of the world, are rooted in local folklore and connected with her family's traditions (some are invented).

Drawing from her bi-cultural upbringing, Miranda-Rivadeneira addresses emigration, feminism, and the conflict of preserving tradition while integrating with contemporary society. The contexts in which these reenactments are staged are not meant to romanticize her past experiences but rather act as reference points on her search for truthfulness.

About Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira
Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira was raised in Queens, NY and graduated in 2005 from the School of Visual Arts in NYC with a bachelor in Fine Arts. In that same year, she was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the acclaimed Fondazione Ratti's Intense Visual Arts program with artist Alfredo Jaar, in Como, Italy.

She traveled extensively around South America in 2006, working as a photojournalist and her work garnered attention from the Danish School of Journalism, who granted Rivadeneira a scholarship to develop a photography project in Denmark.

Since 2006, Miranda-Rivadeneira has worked with projects that deal with identity and intimacy, collaborating with a variety of communities throughout the world as subjects for various photo-based projects. She has 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.

Miranda-Rivadeneira has received countless awards and has had her photography included in exhibitions around the globe. Most recently she was included in Here I am: Selections from New New Yorkers at Queens Museum of Art (NY). A few selected exhibitions include been included at MAAC (Contemporary Museum of Art, Ecuador), Newspace Center of Photography (Oregon), Front Gallery (Denmark), and En Foco at Calumet Photographic (New York).

Also in the Galleries
Eric Gottesman: Tinsae, at Real Art Ways through Sunday, October 2 is an exhibition of photos and videos that explores the life of a teenager in Ethiopia, Tinsae Muluneh.
And through Sunday, August 14, five solo shows - Michael Donovan, Amy Theiss Giese, Asuka Goto, Nicole Ratos Enerson and Jarrett Min Davis - are on display.

Support
Step Up 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.

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