S 23

26 May – 24 September 2023

Opening: Thursday 25 May 18:30 - 21:00, in the presence of the artist

Sem Langendijk » Haven

... until 18 June 2023

Ernest Cole » House of Bondage

... until 14 June 2023

Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam

Keizersgracht 609 . 1017 DS Amsterdam
T +31 (0)20-5516500
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Mon-Wed 10am-6pm; Thu-Fri 10am-9pm; Sat-Sun 10am-6pm

Doll Index 2, 1733-1950, 2022
© Sara Cwynar, courtesy of the artist and the Approach London

Sara Cwynar »

S/S 23

26 May – 24 September 2023

Foam is proud to present a large-scale solo exhibition by Sara Cwynar (b. 1985, Vancouver, CA), the seventh exhibition in the series Next Level. Sara Cwynar is a leading artist of her generation who seeks to make sense of our current visual culture through photography, essayistic video works, collages, installations and books. In her studio, she collects and documents images and objects to identify the ways that these everyday materials shape our lives as we consume them. In this way, she captures the prevailing ideals and ideologies of an era.

Pamela as Pamela, 2023 © Sara Cwynar.

Through photographs taken from encyclopedias, the internet and a myriad of catalogues, excerpts from literary essays by leading thinkers as well as witty captions she plucks straight from Instagram – Cwynar gives chapter and verse to the process of imaging that shapes how we perceive the world. A common thread in Cwynar's work is her ongoing research into the effects of consumerism and how it subconsciously shapes our beauty and lifestyle ideals and subsequently, our self-image. Much of her work specifically focuses on the female consumer: from the cultural phenomenon of the New Woman of the turn of the nineteenth century until now. The exhibition title, S/S 23, is the usual designation for the new fashion season – in this case 'Spring/Summer 2023'. It refers to the trends that come and go, that keep pushing us to buy new products and conform to new ideals.

New work will premiere in her solo exhibition, in which she examines not only the products, but also the buildings with which we shape our living environment. Her work is like an index to the Zeitgeist, charting which ideals we strive for and which are lost. In addition, the existing video work Red Film (2018) will be shown, in which the artist hangs upside down and shares her research findings, while interrupting and being interrupted by a male narrator. Red Film uses the perfect red lipstick to reveal and critique what and why we buy, what this says about society's expectations, how our desire is constantly fed, and what value we ascribe to all these products we surround ourselves with.

Like an anthropologist of our contemporary economy of endless choice, Sara Cwynar explores what the products, colours and images are with which we constantly shape our lives and identities and how they change over time. Through her work, she encourages the viewer to go beneath the surface of capitalism and modern visual culture to discover what is ‘real’. The outcome is a detailed examination of the mechanisms that guide and determine our perception, making her work as seductive as it is disturbing.

Contemporary Floral Arrangement - #144551 (1967) #2
The Relationship is a Matter of Style, 2023
© Sara Cwynar

Foam & Sara Cwynar
Next Level: Sara Cwynar marks a long-standing relationship between Foam and the artist, who first exhibited in Amsterdam at Foam 3h in 2013 with her solo Everything in the Studio (Destroyed). In 2015, she was also chosen as one of the Foam Talents and her work was part of the exhibition Under Construction – New Positions in American Photography presented by Foam in 2014, which travelled on to Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY in 2015.

About the artist
In the ten years since her first solo at Foam, her career has swiftly taken off: Cwynar has participated in solo and group exhibitions at international museums including Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2021); The Guggenheim Museum, New York (2021); LACMA, Los Angeles (2020); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2019); Milwaukee Art Museum (2019); Oakville Galleries (2018); Minneapolis Institute of Art (2018); MMK Frankfurt (2017); Fondazione Prada (2016); and MoMA PS1 (2015). Her work is included in the collections of museums such as the Guggenheim Museum (New York), SFMoMA (San Francisco), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York) and Foam. In 2021, Aperture published her second book Glass Life and she has won several awards in recent years, including the Ammodo Tiger Short Award, twice for her video works Rose Gold (2017) and Red Film (2018) at IFFR. Sara Cwynar lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by Cooper Cole, Toronto and The Approach, London.

Tommy, 2018 © Sem Langendijk

Sem Langendijk » Haven

... until 18 June 2023

Sem Langendijk's first solo exhibition, Haven, shows the result of a long-term photographic investigation into the process and effects of gentrification and the social inequality it generates. While living and working space is created for some, others are constantly forced to make room. Foam shows Haven at a time when many city dwellers are looking for affordable housing and when many Amsterdam residents can no longer afford to live in the neighbourhood they once grew up in.

New York Grain Terminal, 2016 © Sem Langendijk.

Who owns the city? In his research project Haven, Sem Langendijk attempts to capture the environment of his youth: a place that no longer exists. While growing up in a community of labourers, artists, squatters and outsiders in the western harbours of Amsterdam, Langendijk saw the city slowly but surely change its course. The city’s fringe was transformed into a smoothed-out quay with a new skyline, luxury apartments and large-scale architecture. Haven examines the environments of different port cities in various phases of transition, highlighting the transformation of disused docklands and the communities that reside there — showing not only a process of urban development but alyo of social exclusion.

Once fallen into disuse, port areas are the type of sanctuary for creatives who, with limited resources, shape their living environment in idiosyncratic ways. Uplifting these post-industrial environments into creative hubs, it’s just a matter of time before they have to make way for new construction projects in which there is no longer room for them. With an air of nostalgia, Sem Langendijk quietly observes the process of transformation through his lens. Piecing together the mundane as silent signifiers of gentrification, his criticism lies not in the natural cycle of how cities develop, but in the loss of character and history in the current trend of large-scale re-development projects. Having photographed in Amsterdam’s ADM, the Docklands of London and Red Hook in New York, at times it’s hard to distinguish one place from another in the homogenous and anonymous architecture of glass, metal and concrete that replaces the cultural imprint these places once had.

Dog, 2018 © Sem Langendijk.

Sem Langendijk (1990, NL) grew up in Amsterdam's Westerdok and still lives and works in Amsterdam. He began his photographic research on the re-development of former port areas as a graduation project at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague in 2015, and in the following years, he released the three-part publication The Docklands Project, focusing on the gentrification and privatization of docklands in Amsterdam, London and New York. He brought the material from this long-term research together in 2022 in his publication Haven (The Eriskay Connection), in which the different cities merge into a penetrating documentary reflection on the process and effects of gentrification.

In his documentary photography practice, he focuses primarily on portraying places and communities, exploring what connects people to their surroundings and what gives a place meaning and character. He works primarily analogue with slow, technical cameras, typical of the contemplative observation of the environment in which Langendijk finds himself.

Ernest Cole » House of Bondage

... until 14 June 2023

Foam proudly presents the first overview of the work of South African photographer Ernest Cole. The exhibition includes parts of his archive, which had long been considered lost. The overview was assembled in collaboration with the Ernest Cole Family Trust, which in 2017 secured control of Cole’s archive. Cole is celebrated for his tireless documentation of Black lives in South Africa under apartheid: a regime of institutionalised racial segregation that was in effect from 1948 to the early 1990s.

As one of the first Black freelance photographers, Cole offered with his work an unprecedented view from the inside. Born in a township, Cole experienced the strains of apartheid first-hand. By having himself reclassified from ‘black’ to ‘coloured’, he managed to access places where most South Africans were banned. He risked his life exposing the grim reality of racial segregation, by documenting miners inside the mines, police controls and the demolition of townships, among others.

Cole lived a nomadic life, exiled from his native South Africa for his photographic publication House of Bondage (1967). The chapters from this book form the narrative for this exhibition. The book openly denounced the apartheid regime and was promptly banned in South Africa. In risk of arrest, Cole had gone into exile in 1966. He would never return to South Africa again.

About the artist
Living between Sweden and the United States, Cole continued to document Black lives in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. However, being Black and stateless proved debilitating there too, and a publication of his American work would never materialise. Towards the end of his life, Cole became increasingly disillusioned and reportedly started living on the streets of New York. He died at age 49 from pancreatic cancer. Much of Cole’s work had been considered lost, until the rediscovery of 60.000 negatives and contact sheets in the safety deposit boxes of a Swedish bank in 2017.

Besides (colour) images from his time in America, the archive contains unpublished photographs and contact sheets from House of Bondage. The exhibition in Foam is the first large scale overview of Cole’s work to include parts of his retrieved archive.

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