How We Hold the Sun with Anna Rotty
How we Hold the Sun
with Anna Rotty
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024 at 7 pm EDT via Zoom
Join artist Anna Rotty as she shares her recent work titled How We Hold the Sun, a culmination of three years in graduate school at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Rotty explores the transformational and relational qualities of light and water in motion. Anna is fascinated by bodies of water as fluid beings, rather than fixed representations, with complicated histories - bodies representing power and agency, but also subject to attempts of control.
“I observe, and then reconstruct my photographs in the studio, or within the environment, that investigate the systems, both natural and built, that transfer energy and water from place to place. This series consists of intimate portraits of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, often shown as layered moments within a single frame. I search for places where light and shadow come together in the depths or hovering on surfaces to illuminate sediment, rephotographing prints within the environment, showing the connection between landscape and body.”
Anna Rotty’s work invites movement through space and physical engagement, helping us slow down, pay attention, and shift perception, presenting imagery as physical prints, light-etched mirrors, or through motorized rippled water from the river, evaporating and projecting onto the ground.
“This work and my practice owe deep gratitude to the Tiwa Pueblo people who have been caring for and communing with the land and water represented in this work since time immemorial. I am grateful to be a visitor learning from this incredible place.”
Anna Rotty lives on Tiwa land in Albuquerque where she is an MFA candidate and instructor of photography at the University of New Mexico. She received a BFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2011. Anna grew up on Wampanoag land known as Scituate, Massachusetts and spent nine years living on Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area. Anna investigates water, light and infrastructure, informing her understanding of orientation and place. Her work has been published by Southwest Contemporary, Humble Arts Foundation, and Lenscratch, where she earned 3rd place in the Student Portfolio Prize in 2023. Anna is part of Collective Constructs, a collaborative group of artists and art historians engaging with public visual scholarship to works from the permanent collection at the UNM Art Museum. As a recipient of the Silver Eye Center for Photography 2024 Fellowship, Anna will exhibit work in Pittsburgh this Summer.
Check out:
Anna’s new book: Cottonwood Prism with National Monument Press
Anna’s upcoming exhibition: Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship 24 opening May 2nd, Pittsburgh, PA,
Anna Rotty
Anna Rotty
Anna Rotty
Anna Rotty
