Skyscrapers and Shadows – Labor and Migration in Doha, Qatar
Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, 6 p.m.
Aug. 17 – Sept. 30
Exploring the lives of the transnational labor migrants in the petroleum-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula.
September 12th Presentation by photographer Kristin Giordano and Professor Andrew Gardner in room 020 at 6:00 p.m. followed by conversation and light refreshments in the exhibit space.
Collins Memorial Library
University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington
The husband and wife team of Andrew Gardner, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound, and Kristin Giordano, a Tacoma-based photographer and artist, have created a cross-disciplinary and blurred-genre exhibition that explores the lives of the transnational labor migrants in the petroleum-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula. The exhibit comprises a constellation of materials (migration narratives, portraits, material culture, fieldwork notes, environmental photography) collected mainly during their two-year residence in Qatar between 2008 and 2010. Drawing on the ideas of unadorned collage, this exhibition forsakes the promotion of a central narrative. Instead, the exhibit comprises a constellation of materials, fragmentary in nature, that are collectively attentive to both process and the resulting product of their attempts to illuminate the lives of the millions of men and women who together constitute the third largest transnational migration flow in the contemporary world.
BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Gardner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He is a sociocultural anthropologist and ethnographer by training. For the past decade, Andrew’s fieldwork has been focused on the petroleum-rich states of the Arabian peninsula, with a specific focus on the experiences of South Asian labor migrants. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. Between 2008 and 2010, he also served as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Qatar University. His most recent book, City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (Cornell, 2010), explores the experiences of Indian transnational migrants in Bahrain and the society that hosts them.
Kristin Giordano is a photographer based in the US. She works mainly with antique and experimental cameras. Recent projects include Landscape and Transformation, Photographs of Doha, Qatar, 2008-2011, a series of black and white photographs examining the changing cityscape of a global boomtown; Skyscrapers and Shadows: Labor and Migration in Doha, Qatar, a series of portraits of labor migrants in Doha; Stories of the Desert: Djinn and the Unseen in Qatar, a collaborative project combining collected folktales and pinhole photography; and Temporal Terminus: Marking the Line, a public art installation along the historic Prairie Line Trail in Tacoma, WA. Recent exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; Metroform Ltd; and Fulcrum Gallery. Her work is represented by Getty, Alamy, and Photonations, and is in numerous public and private collections. Awards include a 2008 project grant from Qatar University, a 2011 Print Sponsorship award from the Photographic Center Northwest, and a 2011 T AIP Artist Project Grant. Her recent series “Landscape and Transformation: Photographs of Doha, Qatar 2008-2010 was selected as a finalist in PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass portfolio contest.