Wounds of Violence
Adél Koleszár
Wounds of Violence
Nominated by Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, 2019
The series deals with geographical and urban sites of Mexico where illegal, contemporary mass grave shave been discovered, contrasting the local landscape that has been violated by these graves with the mental, physical consequences that these extremes has on women in the area. The photos portray women who have been subjected to these conditions, so searching for relief in alternative religions, drugs or the abuse have left visible marks on their bodies.
Adél Koleszár
Adél Koleszár (1986) is originally from Hungary, where she graduated with a Masters in Fine Art Photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Fine and Applied Arts, after receiving a BA degree in Social Sciences in Budapest. In the past years she has been working and living in Mexico, where she works with the aim of completing her visual research on human violence. In 2013 she arrived to the country thanks to a Mexican Governmental Artist Residency Program, in 2014 her project on contemporary religions in Mexico was selected as finalist by Magnum Photos & Ideastap Photography Award, in 2015 she was the winner of the Budapest Portfolio Prize, in 2016-17 receiver of the Pécsi József Scholarship which supports the work of young Hungarian photographers. Between march and may of 2016 she taught locals in several cities along the US/Mexican border as part of a self initiated, open and free to everyone workshop project, Vision del Norte, with the aim to teach the participants how to use the visual language of photography to express their thoughts about the reality they are living in, and share it with a wider public in a form of a book which compiled the vision of each participants. The same year she was the solo exhibitor of the Discovery Show section of the Fotofestiwal Lodz, and her book „New Routes of Faith” was shortlisted on the Unseen Photography Dummy Award. Her work was exhibited and published widely in her country and internationally, amongst in Berlin, Mexico City, New York, Arles, Vienna, and featured on Foam Spotlight, Vice Mexico, Fotografia Magazine, Der Grief. Currently she keeps working on new projects, as well as continues the investigation on the alternative religious forms in Mexico.
The focus of my work in the past years has been human violence and poverty: how its constant reception can restructure the society and the self. I live and work in Mexico with the aim of completing my visual research on this topic, where I look for cultural movements, group activities, individual destinies which exist as consequence of the persistent violence and repress. My goal is to be engaged from an intimate closeness in order to witness, capture the essence of these realities, emotionally, mentally strongly involve the viewer into the topics I'm working with, to give the audience another perspective on the reasons why their lifestyle may often appear to be controversial and condemned, where I believe the key always lies in a brutal social and political system. I aim to give voice and visibility for people who are social outcasts, victims of injustice, showing contemporary social conflicts in a different context and narrative other than the newspapers. The photograph's focal point is a physical remnant of violence – a scar, a bruise, or a symbolic conduit, landscape – while the non-physical remnants of aggression are left to the viewer to interpret through a gaze, expression or pose and in physical space accompanied with text, interviews, even sound, so the story can become a whole, questioning faith, the nature of human and it's behavior
ProfessionPhotographer
IdentityWoman
LocationEastern Europe
PracticeDocumentary
TopicsPolitics
Nominated byRobert Capa Contemporary Photography Center
Year2019
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