Rachelle Mozman: Casa de Mujeres and La Negra y su Pequeña

Rachelle Mozman: Casa de Mujeres and La Negra y su Pequeña by Pauline GolaAugust 21, 2013

En el cuarto de la niña, c print, 23×26 inches, 2010

New York photographer, Rachelle Mozman creates photographs and videos that “intersect document, narrative and performance. She is fascinated with ideas of ethnography and her work engages themes around family, class and color divides”. Her well celebrated series Casa de Mujeres explores these themes with not only a painter’s eye, but with layered and nuanced reflections that speak to our humanness. Her work can be seen in the current Critical Mass Top 50 exhibition at the Southeast Museum of Photography through October 4th, 2013.

Rachelle grew up in New York City and currently makes work between Brooklyn and Panama City, Panama. Mozman has an MFA from Tyler School of Art. In 2013 Rachelle will be an artist in residence at LMCC. She has been artist in residence at The Camera Club of New York, Smack Mellon and Light Work. A selection of Mozman’s photographs have been published in the Light Work annual Contact Sheet, and Nueva Luz.

Rachelle is a Fulbright Fellow, and has exhibited at the Chelsea Museum, New York, New York, The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, New Jersey, Museo de Diseño y Arte Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica, Festival de la luz at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina the Instituto Cultural Itau, São Paulo, Brazil, the Friese Museum, Berlin, Germany, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay, Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City, Mexico, Festival Biarritz, Biarritz, France, as well as the IX Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador.

Casa de Mujeres and La Negra y su Pequeña

As an artist working with still images, my practice is concerned with the intersection of documentary, narrative and performance tendencies. My image making comes from a biographical place as I explore my family history to engages themes around identity, color and class.

images from Casa de Mujeres

Almohada, c print, 23×26 inches, 2010

In my recent series Casa de Mujeres, my mother plays the role of three women in one fictional Latin American home. These photographs can be read as portraits of my mother as her various selves- like a nested doll, and read as images that reveal the conflict of vanity, race and class that live within one woman. In these photographs the three women, a pair of twin sisters, one lighter in skin color and a maid, are family and they hold both love and contempt for each other.

El espejo, c print, 23×26 inches, 2010

In La Negra y su Pequeña, the images describe La Negra, living in the United States with her younger daughter Pequeña. La Negra is the darker twin sister. The character Pequeña is a construction played by my mother and myself, with my mother’s body and my face blended together. Ultimately my work is concerned with the internal gaze in conflict with external gaze.