Lena Holzer’s A Shadow in the Shape of a House looks at the home as a place of solace and isolation during a government-mandated lockdown in Austria. In these quiet, intimate and peculiar depictions of home, Holzer examines the concept of estrangement from the familiar through a shift in perspective. By drawing upon typical household items, archival images and various sculptures, Holzer explores the impact of leaving behind the sanctimonious, petit-bourgeois town they grew up in, as well as the movement of humanity from past to present and from what is considered normal to what is deemed irregular.
Jodie Bateman interrogates the complicated stereotypes associated with being a Muslim in Western societies with My Hijab has a Voice: Revisited. The intimate portraits in this series take the viewer into the mind of individuals who have to grapple with the ever-changing landscape of religious stereotyping while living in a body already marked as ‘other’. Bateman explores the idea of belonging by photographing herself and her family in thought-provoking ways, with the intimacy of one who is mindful of the space she and her images take up. In one of the most striking images, Bateman shows one subject holding a camera remote while also tenderly cupping the face of the other subject. The portraits, which are all made within the confines of the home, raise many questions about the freedom that can exist between the politics of modesty and defiance. Bateman’s photographs are quiet, yet still speak directly to the preposterous damage that stereotypes can inflict.