Anna Malagrida

In large-scale, quiet prints and video works, Anna Malagrida explores notions of concealment, the dichotomy between interior and exterior spaces, and the act of looking in a media-saturated environment. Her series of photographs “Vistas Veladas” (or “Fogged Views”) presents overexposed images of the city of Amman taken from hotel windows. The images’ whiteout effect was initially an accident produced when Malagrida’s negatives were damaged going through security checkpoints in luxury hotel lobbies. She embraced the effect as a metaphor for cultures of secrecy and surveillance in the Middle East and the camera’s ability to conceal. In her “Point de Vue” series, for which the artist captured photographs of whitewash paint on glass and marks left on windows’ dust and paint, Malagrida nods to painting and sculpture. “All of them [the marks] are as many filters and ways of reading the image,” she has said. Malagrida’s work has been compared to that of David Goldblatt and Bernd and Hilla Becher.