Join us at Photoville 2024!
Prasiit Sthapit
At this year’s Photoville festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Magnum Foundation is pleased to present two projects: Prasiit Sthapit’s Moonsongs for Earth, which explores the role of musicians in Nepal’s Maoist revolution; and Can American Labor Seize the Moment?, which features seven photographers who document the current state of organized labor in the United States.
Plan your visit:
Location: Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza |1 Water St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
On View: June 1 – June 16, 2024 | Opening weekend: June 1 and 2, 2024
About our exhibitions:
Prasiit Sthapit
Featuring work by Prasiit Sthapit
From 1996–2006, Nepal was in the grips of a war that pitted the government forces against the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists). This period was marked by intense violence that left almost 17,000 dead, 1,300 disappeared, thousands disabled, and hundreds of thousands displaced.
For the Maoists, music emerged as a powerful tool during the war, serving not only as propaganda, but also as battle cries and catharsis. Musicians poured their hearts into words and melodies, singing of fury, bullets and bombs, blood painting the land red, the struggle of war, and also of flowers blooming, smiles, warm embraces, love, and of life itself.
With the war’s end, the monarchy abolished, and the Maoist party transitioning into mainstream politics, disillusionment grew. Feeling betrayed by the war’s resolution, many of the musicians came to realize that their songs only dreamt of a revolution but could never bring about the changes they had so desperately hoped for. Moonsongs for Earth offers a musical exploration of this decade-long war in Nepal: the dream for a just, egalitarian society and the subsequent betrayal.
Presented by: Magnum Foundation, PhotoKTM, and Aperture Foundation
Curated by: Sarah Perlmutter and Tif Ng
This exhibition accompanies the Spring 2024 issue of Aperture magazine, “Counter Histories,” produced in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation. This exhibition is produced with support from Magnum Foundation’s Counter Histories Initiative, which supports projects that revisit and reframe the past in the context of the present. Counter Histories is supported by The Henry Luce Foundation.
Rita Harper
Can American Labor Seize the Moment?
Featuring work by Chloe Aftel, Rita Harper, Sylvia Jarrus, Octavio Jones, Stacy Kranitz, Jeff Rae, Sara Terry
After decades of rising inequality, unions are more popular than they have been in half a century in the United States. However, the reality of unions’ standing is decidedly mixed.
In the middle of the 20th century, one in three American workers was a union member. Today, only one in ten is — despite tens of millions of working people say they would join a union if they could. The changing face of unions is complicated by the “gig economy.” It’s also geographic; though organized labor wields great power in certain places, it is nearly nonexistent in others.
The six projects in this exhibition capture the range of organized labor’s power in America today — where it is strong, where it is growing, and where workers who fall through the cracks are forced to find creative ways to fend for themselves. They reflect the diversity of American labor: demographically, economically, and geographically.
The projects here include looking at teacher’s unions in Florida, domestic workers in California, a unique re-entry program in New York that trains formerly incarcerated people for skilled union construction work, retail union organizers in the South, the United Autoworkers and the impact of its robust new contract on the lives of union members, and a historical look at labor organizing in Los Angeles.
The true story of unions in America is one of hopeful progress mixed with frustrating decline.
Presented by: Mother Jones, Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and Magnum Foundation
Curated by: Mark Murrmann