Christy Shigekawa
cs@christyshigekawa.com
www.christyshigekawa.com
www.designorganism.com
StatementI am inspired by ambiguity and mystery in everyday life, unpredictable circumstances and coincidence. With my camera I create portraits of places that are both minutely specific and ambiguously anonymous. I use my photographs to simultaneously capture the world as it literally exists as well as create my own disorienting vision of the world. Context is everything. Photography allows me to re-contextualize and make alien (and therefore call attention to) the mundane things which exist in life largely unnoticed. It is these happenstantial occurrences, these moments of unexpected beauty and strangeness that I am drawn to.
Continually present in my mind are the questions of how we construct our understanding of the world and how we narrate our lives. I seek out the intersections between fate and personal control. We all want to leave a mark, to be remembered. As much as we try to control this, our marks are inevitably altered by fate in the forms of decay, progression, and reinterpretation. Likewise, memory, with all its malleability and the degree to which it is subject to revision and distortion, functions in direct parallel to this. It is the struggle to control our memories versus the forces that are beyond our control causing them to be lost and misinterpreted.
RésumeEDUCATION
2008 • Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI - MFA Photography
2006 • California State University, Chico - B.A. Communication Design, option in Graphic Design, Minors in Psychology and Art StudioEXHIBITIONS / PUBLICATIONS
2011: “Slideluck Bushwick,” 3rd Ward, Brooklyn, NY.
2010: “Doodle,” Anton Art Center, Mount Clemens, MI.
2008: “CMYK Magazine Vol. 42
“Photographer's Forum Best of Photography Annual 2008”
“Here & Now: The 2008 Graduate Degree Exhibition,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“Here & Now: The 2008 Graduate Book of Cranbrook Academy of Art”
“8th Annual Cranbrook Video Festival,” Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“They Live: Cranbrook Performance Night 2008,” Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“Side by Side: New works from the Cranbrook Photography studios,” Museum of New Art, Detroit, Pontiac, MI.
“Under New Management,” Bolton Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“Mailed and Mounted,” Anton Art Center, Mount Clemens, MI.
“Michigan Annual XXXIV,” Anton Art Center, Mount Clemens, MI.
2007: “Transmorphicationalshiftolution,” Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“7th Annual Cranbrook Video Festival,” Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“Picture This: New Ideas on Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art,” Museum of New Art, Detroit, Pontiac, MI.
“Only Human,” 79 New Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
“Environ-meant,” Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
2006: “Loupe,” Forum Gallery, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
“10th Annual Janet Turner Student Printmakers’ Invitational,” Ayers Hall, California State University, Chico, CA.
2005: “Photographer’s Forum magazine Best of College Photography Annual” 2004 and 2005.
“Digital Dialog,” Chico Art Center, Chico, CA.
2004: “29th Comm. Design Graphic Design & Illustration Student Show,” CSU, Chico, CA, Honor Letterforms.
“The Annual CSU, Chico Communication Design Photography Show (2003, 2004),” Award of Excellence (2003).
MEMBERSHIPS
2004–present • AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
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