MARIA KAPAJEVA

Maria Kapajeva is an artist from Estonia who works and lives in London. Her multicultural background drives her to explore a diverse spectrum of cultural identity and gender issues within historical and contemporary contexts. She builds on vernacular photography that she finds in archives, old family albums, on the internet or in flea markets to create stories and artworks. Her pieces have been featured internationally in festivals and other venues; solo exhibitions in Estonia and Poland, group exhibitions in Belgium, the USA, Croatia, Colombia, Lithuania, France and India and screenings at FOKUS Video Art Festival (Denmark, 2018), Deptford Cinema (London, 2018), NexT Film Festival (Romania, 2017) and Berlin Feminist Film Week, 2017. Her first dummy book was shortlisted for the UNSEEN Dummy Award 2016 and made the Top 10 in the Dummy Award Self-Publish Riga 2016. The book will be published in 2018 in collaboration with Kaunas Photography Gallery. Maria was awarded the Gasworks & Triangle Network Fellowship for an Art Residency in Kooshk, Iran, and was invited to the Kaunas Photography Gallery Residency, Narva Art Residency, FATHOM Residency at Four Corners Film, Bridge Guard Residency. Together with her practice, she works for the project Fast Forward: Women in Photography which aims to promote, celebrate and engage with women in photography across the globe. She is co-editor of the online platform fastforward.photography and leads the Instagram project @womeninphoto. Maria also teaches at the University for the Creative Arts (Farnham, United Kingdom) and she has been a visiting lecturer at various institutions.