El Jardín de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan

Filter Photo is pleased to present El Jardín de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan, a solo exhibition of work by Tarrah Krajnak.

Named after a Jorge Luis Borges story by the same title, the exhibition El Jardín de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan explores the process of tracing my origins amidst contradictory familial narratives. Indigenous to Peru and orphaned as an infant I was adopted into a working-class transracial family from the American coal country and raised as a twin to my African American brother. This early experience of racial difference established my ongoing preoccupation with orphanhood, ancestral exile, origins, and the way these constructs are written on the body and in the archive. In this series, I set out not to recover some stable authentic identity hidden by the circumstances of my birth and adoption, but rather to build a psychic history, to imagine lineages, to invent mothers, and to resurrect ancestors in an effort to understand my place within the larger political, social, and historical narratives of my birthplace–Lima, Peru circa 1979.

View a walkthrough of the exhibition here.

Tarrah Krajnak was born in Lima, Peru in 1979. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at Honor Fraser Gallery, as-is.la gallery, Houston Center for Photography, SUR Biennial Los Angeles, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Center for Photography Woodstock, SF Camerawork, Philadelphia Photographic Arts Center, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Photo Madrid, Photo London, Belfast Photography Festival, and Unseen Amsterdam. Her work has been published online and in print in the LA Review of Books, Nueva Luz, Spot Magazine, Strange Fire Collective, and Camerawork. She received grants from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Texas Photographic Society, and most recently from the Harpo Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in Glasstire, ArtForum, and Contemporary Review Los Angeles.

On View: October 9 – December 12, 2020

Location: Filter Space | 1821 W Hubbard St, Suite 207

This exhibition was partially sponsored  by The Illinois Arts Council Agency and a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.