Chandra+Stewart
Our collaborative practice explores territorial geographies and the processes of globalization. We interrogate the limits and freedoms of global fluidity and the physical and psychological affect of borders, belonging and displacement. Currently based in the Asia-Pacific region we have developed our first project, Dark Pacific Sun, as a dialectical and cross-cultural articulation of both the real and the imaginary Pacific.
Mohini Chandra
Mohini Chandra's previous work has dealt with articulations of identity and globalized spaces, and the role of the photographic in relation to memory and migration. As a child Chandra spent time in Fiji and traveled widely with her family within the Indian-Fijian diaspora. She has an interest in photographic histories and the processes of visual culture within colonial, anthropological and ethnographic discourses and the imagery of contemporary globalized cultures.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art Chandra has exhibited widely, including: Paradise Now? Contemporary Art From the Pacific, Asia Society Museum, New York; Out of India, Queens Museum of Art, New York; The East Wing Collection, Courtauld Institute, London; Crown Jewels, Neue Gesellschaft Fur Bildende Kunst (NGBK) Berlin & Kampnagel Art Gallery, Hamburg; 000ZeroZeroZero, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Artist and the Archive, Shoreditch Biennale; and in international events such as the First Johannesburg Biennale and the Photography Triennial - Dislocations, Rovaniemi Museum in Finland. She has had solo shows at venues such as the Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida and the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool. Most recently, Chandra exhibited in the biennial Focus Festival of Photography in Mumbai (2013) with the work Imaginary Edens.
Her work is held in international collections in the UK and USA including the UK's Arts Council Collection and included in major survey publications such as Phaidon's Art and Photography (ed. David Campany). Chandra has been awarded grants and commissions including an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship, Arts Council of England Individual Artists’ Awards and travel awards from the British Council.
Christopher Stewart
Christopher Stewart's work has been concerned with hierarchies of vision, surveillance and contested territories. Previous work includes Insecurity which examined the global phenomenon of privatized global security, utilizing this modern hyper-industry as a metaphor for analyzing global insecurity. Subsequent projects have included Kill House, a photographic navigation through a US based military structure used for the training of private military personnel prior to deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan and Super Border - photographs taken along the route of the newly opened 300 million euro External Integrated Vigilance System on the southern Andalucian coast in Spain.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art he has taken part in over forty solo and group exhibitions internationally including at Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Recent group and solo exhibitions include The History of Now, F/STOP Fotografie Festival Leipzig (2012); Darkside II, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2009); and Something That I’ll Never Really See, a Victoria & Albert Museum Collection touring exhibition. His work is featured in The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson World of Art Series (ed. Charlotte Cotton 2004, 2009 & 2014); 100 European Photographers EXIT Madrid 2014; The Critical Dictionary, Black Dog, London, 2011; and Michael Langford’s Basic Photography, Focal Press 2009. His work is held in public and private collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum’s permanent collection in London and the Martin Z. Marguiles collection in the USA.