Eva Sajovic

Prior to the launch of Eva’s exhibition in the MediaNox Gallery, 

Learning Lab brought together artists, curators, activists, educators and interested practitioners to partake in a day of critical debate and co-production.

This included critical panels, co-production workshops, and lively conversation.

Eva’s work pushes the boundaries of participatory and collaborative arts, challenging the dynamics of power and assumptions made by artists when working with and alongside communities of place and dis/placement. Her participatory photography and social portraiture to date guided the conversation, specifically focusing on work produced during a recent two-part residency on climate change and displacement at Darat Al Funun Foundation in Amman, Jordan.

Learning Lab facilitated critical dialogue and a questioning of participatory photography as a tool of agency and emancipation. How different types and practices of citizenship can be enacted through photographic practice, and how natural plants and ecology act as catalysts for new modes of citizenship and community were also explored.

During the Lab a co-production workshop was convened and participants were invited to bring photographs of plants and people relating to issues of migration, climate change, and displacement. 

The resulting works were two series of photographs layered with aural and written statements which were collated through the  conversations to transform and/or re-contextualise the images and communicate a collectively forged/defined narrative.

This methodology is based on the model of the tape slides medium, largely used by community photography groups in the UK in the 70s, as a means of creating alternative modes of communication.

Learning Lab builds upon an ongoing, collaborative conversation between artist, Eva Sajovic, Agnes Czajka (Open University) and Áine O’Brien (Counterpoints Arts) initiated at the Who Are We? project at Tate Exchange London. It is co-produced with Terra Vera, Slovenia.