Image Credit: Amigou Lab
About Cali M. Banks
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Cali M. Banks (Munsee Lenape/Scottish) is a lens-based artist currently based in Syracuse, NY. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a BA in Art and Technology and Global Health Studies from Allegheny College.
Cali is the Communications Coordinator for Light Work, and is also an Adjunct Professor of Photography, Video Art and Filmmaking for Syracuse University and Indiana University campuses. Cali is also a 2024 En Foco Photography Fellow.
Her artistic practice reclaims identity through auto-ethnographic, experimental photography and filmmaking. Her work explores personal and collective histories, relational intimacies, and the expansion of narrow, flattened definitions of indigenous art. Banks navigates the intricacies of Indigeneity, womanhood, and cultural heritage, while challenging essentialism. Her work resists simplistic definitions of identity, instead embracing complexity and nuance. Banks’ practice also explores the layers of existence through materialistic remnants and non-tangibility. She is interested in the idea of image-making as a time or record-keeper, and being able to manipulate that to recreate memories, history, and methods of healing. She is reclaiming what she still has left of her culture, and honoring those rituals in her work.
Banks’ work can be described as raw, often juxtaposing beauty and repulsion, while also capturing intimate moments and emotions, creating dreamlike, introspective scenes. Her process disrupts traditional representations through use of distorted, fragmented, and layered imagery, defying the dominant narratives of photography and filmmaking.
In recent times, she has exhibited work at Art Basel Miami, Every Woman Biennial London, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, Atlanta Film Festival, and Anthology Film Archives. She is also a featured artist in Issue # 24, #26, and #38 of The Hand Magazine, and has been published on Lomography and Lenscratch.
Read her artist profile by Instant Photographers here.
Read her interview with Lomography here.