Biography
Born 1978 London, England
Muzi Quawson is a visual artist primarily working with photography and film. She earned a BA (hons) First Class in Photography from the UCA, Kent and completed an MFA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London
Artist Statement
Rooted in the tradition of documentary photography, Muzi Quawson’s practice explores the construction of identities within American subcultures by examining the lives of individuals situated at the fringes of the mainstream. Often spending months on location, living with the subjects she has chosen to document, she gradually unpacks the cultural tropes that underpin their sense of self.
The individuals to whom Quawson is drawn tend to assert their identity via a blending of references informed by cinema, music, and the history of popular culture. The work draws on American cinematic genres - among them the Western and New Wave Cinema of the 1970s - and their uses of outsiders and antiheroes, while utilising a divergent tonal range, alternating between the informality of the snapshot and the iconic quality of the film still.
Quawson’s work has evolved from displaying single images to projecting sequenced slide-shows to 16 mm film installations, resulting in an exploration of time in relation to image and narrative. By projecting the work and shifting it into a cinematic idiom, the constructed identities adopted by the subjects are amplified in contrast to the day-to-day realities of their lives. Without positing a linear narrative, the work functions as a quiet contemplation on the nature of identity.
Quawson’s works have been exhibited at Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Tate Britain, Bloomberg Space, The Photographers’ Gallery, Gana Art, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and IDFA: Paradocs at Amsterdam Art Weekend.
She received the Creative Innovation Award for a Short Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Her work is included in several permanent collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Gana Art, the Mind’s Eye Collection, the Dutch National Bank, UBS, and various private collections across the UK and the USA.
Collections
Gana Art Center, Seoul, KR, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR, The Mind's Eye Collection, Amsterdam, NL, The Dutch Federal Bank, Amsterdam, NL, Collection de Bruin-Heijn, NL, UBS, London, UK, Private Collections held in The UK, The Netherlands and The USA.