Karen Dias

I’m a multidisciplinary artist from Mumbai with roots in Goa, India. My work is informed by a decade-long career as a photojournalist, which informs my investigation into the role of documentary photographs in truth-telling and their relevance as a reliable document of our times. I am concerned with questions about representations of violence, power, conflict, and empathy in photography and visual culture. This investigation into the responsibility of images informs my sculptural practice explored through the use of found materials and objects from our everyday lives to question socio-political hierarchies through a lens of feminist intersectionality. Playing with ideas of legibility and obscurity, my work leads the viewer to question their role as a participant, bystander, or witness in acts of violence and oppression. Playing with ideas of the physical and metaphorical meanings of sight and vision, I see the viewer as actively engaging in decoding my work to find their ideological place in the world by studying the semiotics, icons, emblems, and motifs in images and objects to reconstruct and challenge preconceived ideas and meanings. My practice spreads across lens-based processes, sculpture, and installation.