UNFIXED Projects

SARA BLOKLAND AND ASMARA PELUPESSY
Curators and Co-Founders of UNFIXED Projects

UNFIXED Projects began with a shared interest in photography’s relationship to culture and heritage, characterized by some key similarities and differences in our own backgrounds. Both of us trace parts of our ancestry to former colonies, are children of migrants to the ‘West’ and identify with a juxtaposition of heritages, cultures, images and histories. However, the Dutch versus United States perspectives, language and sensitivities around culture and representation consistently came to the foreground in our meetings. Gradually these critical differences in the ways race, multiculturalism and cultural identity are constructed in Europe and the US began to reveal themselves as productive opportunities to develop broader and more flexible understandings about these issues. This unfixed view was also notable in contemporary artworks we were inspired by visually and intellectually. Our exchange and exploration of contemporary art and postcolonial, cultural and photographic theory continued and led to the development of the project UNFIXED.