Tamsen Wojtanowski

Tamsen Wojtanowski is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Artist-Run, The Satellite Show, Miami, FL; COOP Gallery, Nashville, TN; Soil Gallery, Seattle, WA, Lux/Eros Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR; and 621 Gallery, Tallahassee, FL. She was added to Fotofilmic’s 2016 Spring Shorlist, and in 2015, was a top ten finalist in The Print Center’s 89th International Juried Competition. She is the recipient of a Fleisher Wind Challenge Award, with an upcoming solo exhibition in the spring of 2018. Wojtanowski is a founding member of the artist-run exhibition space NAPOLEON, in Philadelphia, PA, started in 2011. She received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she is currently an instructor. She also teaches photography at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA.

SHITEATER

These works are in response to that feeling of working hard but remaining wildly out-of-control; actively trying to stay engaged and in good humor as the world around you continues to spin off-kilter. Through this body of work I deal with the commonplace – morning coffee, weekly budgeting, and post-it note cheering sections. I also deal with what has become the everyday – considerations we are forced to participate in and issues we must fight for – women’s health, gun reform, freedoms of sexual and gender identity and increasingly, the breadth of all that is right and good. I use the alternative photographic process of cyanotype and pair this with handmade negatives to explore the overlap between photography, printmaking, and painting. Numerous exposures are layered on top of one another to complicate the visual space and to imitate our modern airwaves, full of news, headlines, gossip, Facebook feeds, Instagram feeds, Twitter feeds, small talk, advertisements, Snap Chat, TV – but what is real? And what does it all mean? Photography is a very malleable medium that is often pigeon-holed into being just one thing. I want to see how far I can push it and through that exploration what I might find.

To view more of Tamsen’s work please visit her website.