“Unveiling Visual Narratives: The International Center of Photography’s ‘To Conjure’ Explores Contemporary Archives”

Koyoltzintli, Oficio Divino, 2022. © Koyolzintli

The International Center of Photography | 84 Ludlow Street, New York

Exhibition Duration January 23-May 5, 2025

Opening Reception January 23, 5-8PM

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is excited to announce To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography, an exhibition curated by Sara Ickow, Associate Director of Exhibitions, Keisha Scarville, Guest Curator, and Elisabeth Sherman, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections.

Uniting the work of seven artists primarily engaged in photography, including Widline Cadet, Koyoltzintli, Tarrah Krajnak, Shala Miller, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Keisha Scarville, and Sasha Wortzel, this exhibition redefines what an archive can encompass. More than merely a tool for recovering the past, these creators employ the archive as a medium for envisioning new possibilities.

To Conjure derives its concept from Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, a 2008 exhibition at ICP curated by Okwui Enwezor. This exhibition reviewed the works of two dozen artists, focusing on the integration of archival documents and materials into their art as a method for exploring various themes, from history and memory to identity and loss. Since that time, the concept of the archive in contemporary art, particularly in photography, has gained substantial traction; as Enwezor noted, it serves as “[…] a conceptual and physical space in which memories are preserved and history is negotiated.”

Departing from the prominence of the traditional institutional archive, the artists in To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography broadens its scope by interacting with materials—garments, instruments, the environment, and beyond—extending past mere photographs and documents. Through the utilization of a wide array of contemporary materials, these artists forge new narratives and sensibilities. As artist and co-curator Keisha Scarville remarked, “The artists in this exhibition are discovering archives in distant places, in new perspectives, the elusive, the familial, the obscure, the imaginative, the auditory, and in mortality. They embody lived histories and express forms for how narratives are sustained. The works in this exhibition explore errant archives to uncover hidden futures. Each creator contests established linear frameworks and enriches our comprehension of what an archive may represent.”

In Widline Cadet’s imagery, both past and present are drawn from different visual perspectives and amalgamated into singular pieces that contemplate her family’s emigration to the United States. Originally from Haiti, Cadet’s works frequently highlight her and her family’s migratory experience as a means of examining how identity and belonging can be fragmented across temporal and spatial dimensions. While archives have historically served as vessels of collective memory and guidelines, in Koyoltzintli’s photographs, it is the contemporary that sheds light on the historical. The ancestral Indigenous instruments she recreates are presented within images featuring herself and even her young daughter, effectively linking past and future generations within one visual tableau.

Tarrah Krajnak’s 1979: Contact Negatives reinterprets the fact of her birth in Lima, Peru in 1979, along with her later adoption from an orphanage there, into an ongoing site for reflection and analysis. Engaging with the exhibition space directly, Krajnak produces cyanotypes of her body that she suspends from the gallery walls amid the projections, effectively ‘returning’ her form to Lima and reminding viewers that, in the absence of an existing archive of memory, one can be constructed for the future. Krajnak will be performing in the gallery during the opening week—specific dates and times will be provided. In lieu of the historical archive, Shala Miller’s Obsidian project fabricates a fictional one surrounding a narrative titled Obsidian, whose Black, non-binary protagonist challenges the conventional hero-antagonist dichotomy. The artistic Obsidian pieces incorporate simulated archival materials such as newspapers, advertisements, and typography to evoke a distant past while simultaneously being grounded in Miller’s fictional present and future.

In Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s project Spirit, the spiritual and revolutionary traditions of the South and Caribbean are manifested in aquatint lithographs that oscillate between structure and spontaneity, as well as history and creativity. By attempting to summon visual snippets from dreams and making them tangible within each piece, Rasheed curates her own provisional archive of the subconscious. In her series Alma/Mama’s Clothes, Keisha Scarville recontextualizes her late mother’s garments through photography and performance. Instead of investigating the origin and significance of these pieces, Scarville utilizes them as a base for images that delve into what she describes as the “materiality of absence.” Scarville will also feature newly printed works on transparent fabric that will be displayed in the exhibition space, encouraging viewers to experience them from various angles.

Sasha Wortzel’s multi-disciplinary endeavor about the Florida Everglades examines the land itself—the marshes, flatwoods, and mangroves—as an archive that embodies the present while encompassing legacies of the past. Through photography and a short video, she constructs a representation of the landscape that reflects both its colonial past and the current environmental degradation inflicted upon it.

For further information, visit icp.org.

About the Artists

Widline Cadet (b. 1992, Pétion-Ville, Ayiti; resides and creates in Los Angeles, CA) obtained her BA in studio art from the City College of New York and an MFA from Syracuse University. She has received a variety of awards and fellowships, including a 2021-22 visual arts fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; a 2020 NYFA / JGS fellowship in photography; the 2020 Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize; a 2019 Lighthouse Works fellowship, and a 2013 Mortimer-Hays Brandeis traveling fellowship. Her residency experiences include the Studio Museum, Harlem (2020-21); Syracuse University School of Art (2019), and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018). Recent solo showcases comprise Take This With You, Huis Marseille, Amsterdam. Recent collective exhibitions feature Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Somerset House, London; Fotografiska Museum, New York; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Museum of Contemporary

Photography, Chicago and Express Newark, Newark, NJ. Her creations have been highlighted in Aperture Magazine, FOAM, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Financial Times, and Wallpaper, among others. Her pieces are included in numerous public and private collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Her work is showcased in Flow States: La Trienal at El Museo del Barrio, New York, which launched on October 10, 2024.

Koyoltzintli (b. 1983, New York, NY; resides and operates in Kingston, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator situated in Upstate New York. She spent her childhood on the Pacific coastline and in the Andes of Ecuador. Her art focuses on sound, ancestral technologies, rituals, and storytelling, merging collaborative approaches with individual stories. Nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2019 and 2023, her work has been showcased at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the United Nations, the Parrish Art Museum, Princeton University, and the Aperture Foundation in NYC and Paris Photo. She has hosted two solo exhibitions at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery and another at Leila Greiche in 2023. Koyoltzintli has instructed at CalArts, SVA, ICP, and CUNY. She has received several accolades and fellowships, including at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, NYFA, We Women, the Latinx Artist Fellowship by the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF), and more recently, the Anonymous Was a Woman award. Her debut monograph, Other Stories, was released in 2017 by Autograph ABP. Her work appeared in the Native issue of Aperture Magazine (no. 240) and was included in the book Latinx Photography in the United States by Elizabeth Ferrer, former lead curator at BRIC. She is involved in Flow States: La Trienal 2024 at El Museo del Barrio. Koyoltzintli has performed at venues including the Whitney Museum, Wave Hill, Socrates Park, Brooklyn Museum, and Queens Museum. Most recently, she showcased her work at Performance Space in NYC, curated by Guadalupe Maravilla, at Dia Chelsea during the closing event of Delcy Morelos’ El Abrazo and at Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, NY.

Tarrah Krajnak (b. Lima, Peru 1979; resides and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an artist engaging across photography, performance, and poetry. Krajnak is currently located in Los Angeles and serves as an Associate Professor of Art at UCLA. She is represented by Zander Galerie, Cologne/Paris. Krajnak is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow and recently received the Jury Prize of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles, as well as the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies and the Hariban Grand Prize from Benrido, Kyoto, Japan. Krajnak has authored three books, including El Jardín De Senderos Que Se Bifurcan (DAIS 2021), Master Rituals II: Weston’s Nudes (TBW 2022), and RePose (FW Books 2023). Her work has been featured in recent editions of Aperture, British Journal of Photography, The Eyes Journal, and European Photography. This past year, Krajnak’s art was displayed in Corps à Corps, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Photography Now, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Aperture’s traveling exhibition You Belong Here: People, Place, & Purpose in Latinx Photography, and in the solo exhibition Shadowings, Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam. Krajnak’s work is part of the collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Pinault Collection, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, among others.

Shala Miller (b. 1993, Cleveland, OH; lives and operates in Brooklyn, NY) also known as Freddie June when performing, was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, by two southern parents named Al and Ruby. Around the age of 10 or 11, Miller stumbled upon tranquility, the type that you are somewhat coerced into, and subsequently was misled into believing that this was the right place to remain. Since that moment, Miller has been endeavoring to escape and gain an understanding of themselves and their history, utilizing photography, video, writing, and singing as tools in this journey. Focusing on skin as a locus of history and intimacy spanning generations, they embrace the body’s vulnerabilities and ailments. Miller engages in photography, film, writing, music, and performance as a way to contemplate the intersections of desire, mourning, pain, and pleasure. Miller holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her publication, Tender Noted, was recognized as the best photo book of 2022 by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and her artwork resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum, Harlem; the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; the Akeroyd Collection and The Lumber Room, Portland, among others.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, East Palo Alto, CA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) investigates communication methods and poetic forms across various species, states of existence, states of awareness, and substrates. She constructs expansive, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public displays; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; videos, and other yet-to-be-defined formats. Recently, she earned a 2024 High Desert Test Sites Fellowship at Joshua Tree; 2023 Working Artist Fellowship; a 2022 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research; a 2022 Creative Capital Award; a 2022 Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants – Experiments with Google; and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her latest solo exhibitions feature REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of seven artist books including, most recently, rub, lick, drink, eat (REDCAT and Rasheed’s publishing initiative, Scratch Disks Full, 2024); all velvet sentences as manifesto, Like a lesson against smooth language or an invitation to be feral hypertext (Emerson College and Scratch Disks Full, 2024); and in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023). She teaches at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and is an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed established Orange Tangent Study, a consulting firm that offers microgrants to artists and aids individuals and organizations in creating expansive and liberatory educational experiences.

Keisha Scarville (b. 1975, Brooklyn, NY; resides and operates in Brooklyn, NY) intertwines themes related to loss, latencies, and the elusive form. Her creations have been broadly exhibited, including at the Studio Museum, Harlem; Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Contact Gallery, Toronto; the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York; Light Work, Syracuse, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, and Higher Pictures Gallery, New York. Recent group exhibitions feature The Rose, Lumber Room, Portland, OR (curated by Justine Kurland); If I Had a Hammer, the 2022 Fotofest Biennial, Houston; and All of Them Witches, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (curated by Dan Nadel and Laurie Simmons). Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; the Denver Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has taken part in residencies at Light Work, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, WOPHA, Miami, Baxter Street CCNY, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Her contributions have been featured in outlets such as Vice, Small Axe, and The New York Times, where her work has garnered critical acclaim. She has been awarded the 2023 Creator Lab Photo Fund and is the recipient of the inaugural 2024 Saltzman Prize in Photography. Her debut publication, lick of tongue rub of finger on soft wound, was issued by MACK and was shortlisted for the 2023 Aperture/Paris Photobook Awards. Currently, she serves as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and is also a faculty member at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Sasha Wortzel (b. 1983, Fort Myers, FL; resides and practices in Brooklyn, NY) is a creator and filmmaker who investigates how the past and the present are deeply interconnected through resonant spaces and their echoes. Her work has been showcased at various venues including the New Museum, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; True/False Film Festival, CPH:DOX, South London Gallery, and Museum Brandhorst in Munich, among others. Notable solo exhibitions comprise Dreams of Unknown Islands, at Cooley Memorial Art Gallery alongside Portland Institute of Contemporary Art TBA Festival. Wortzel is recognized as a 2023 Guggenheim fellow and has received backing from the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, and a MacDowell fellowship. Recent residencies encompass the Fine Arts Work Center, Silver Art Projects, and ISCP’s Ground Floor Program. Wortzel’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum in New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York, and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places. Her latest films include How to Carry Water (CPH:Dox, 2023), which is an IDA Awards nominee for best short documentary and currently available for streaming on the Criterion Channel; This is an Address (MoMA Doc Fortnight, 2020), distributed by Field of Vision; Happy Birthday Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline), which received special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Wortzel’s work has been highlighted in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine.

Exhibition Support

The exhibition is generously backed by ICP Exhibitions Committee members – Luana Alesio, Deborah Brown, Romy Cohen, Marguerite Gelfman, Vasant Nayak, Elizabeth Rea, Benita Sakin, Magali Smith, Helena Sokoloff, and Richard Stern.

Exhibitions at ICP receive support, in part, from Caryl Englander, Almudena Legorreta, ICP Board of Trustees, Shubert Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, alongside public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with contributions from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

About The International Center of Photography

The International Center of Photography (ICP) stands as the foremost institution globally devoted to photography and visual culture. Founded by Cornell Capa in 1974, ICP aims to advocate “concerned photography”—socially and politically aware images that educate and inspire change in the world. Through exhibitions, educational initiatives, community engagement, and public programming, ICP provides an open platform for discussions surrounding the influence of imagery. Since its foundation, ICP has presented over 700 exhibitions, offered thousands of classes, and conducted a diverse array of public programs. In January 2020, ICP inaugurated its newly integrated center at 84 Ludlow Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. ICP acknowledges the original caretakers of this territory, the Lenape people, and other Indigenous groups. Explore icp.org for more information about the museum and its initiatives.

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