Photo credit: Dillon Meyer
Artist Statement
I investigate the collapse of virtual and physical spaces, as well as the growing overlap between memories, lived environments, and digital interfaces.
Photographs, videos, and material fragments are artifacts of their time. These artifacts continually inform and reconstruct our memories as we keep, revisit, and move through our lives with them. The temporary and fleeting nature of my work speaks to that constant reforming happening in and around us. I refine selected elements into their essential forms to piece them together and create different wholes. I am interested in impermanence and the lifecycle of the archive. The activity of arranging and describing an archive is one of power. It is also a space for questioning, epiphany, and wonder. I work in this conceptual framework using installation, video, text, and images.
Migration and a legacy of forgotten and lost objects, documents, and mementos informs my practice. As an artist and archivist, I consider the roles of memory and perception, asking what stories get to be told, who gets to tell those stories, and what ultimately gets preserved.
About
Joana Stillwell (she/her) is an artist and archivist born in the Philippines, raised around the Pacific, and currently based in Washington, DC. She graduated with a BA in Art History and a BFA in Photomedia from the University of Washington, earned an MFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University, and received her MLIS from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Her work has been written about in the Washington Post and Hyperallergic. Exhibitions and installations include the University of Mary Washington (Fredericksburg, VA), VisArts (Rockville, MD), DLECTRICITY (Detroit, MI), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Greenville, SC), 1708 Gallery Inlight (Richmond, VA), and SOIL Gallery (Seattle, WA). Residencies include Mildred’s Lane (Beach Lake, PA), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Sirius Arts Centre (Cobh, Ireland), The Studios at MASS MoCA, (North Adams, MA), VisArts (Rockville, MD), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (Arlington, VA).
CV (PDF)