Each mobilising a distinct, yet playful, visual palette, photographers Sabine Hess and Keerthana Kunnath share an interest in exploring the norms and ideas of what relationships can look and feel like. This panel brings the two artists into a conversation around recent bodies of work, as well as their broader practices.
In One bed, two blankets, seventy-six rules, artist couple Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli confront both the interpersonal and creative aspects of living together as a couple, sharing space whilst tentatively defining boundaries. In the project, images and text come together to constitute a set of rules for how to navigate life as a couple, but also a personal manifesto for how to grow together.
Keerthana Kunnath is an Indian-born, London-based photographer. For several years, she has focused her practice on exploring same-sex relationships and gender-expansive people in the South Asian diaspora. Engaging with the visual rhetoric of post-colonial Indian media, she deconstructs and reimagines narratives, thereby challenging entrenched societal norms. Kunnath’s work is deeply rooted in personal and collective memories, exploring the intersections of intimacy, queerness, and community. Her work is an investigation into the socio-cultural fabric, offering a lens into the intimate and the universal, the personal and the political.
The conversation will be moderated by Kalpesh Lathigra, a photographer and educator, whose work straddles documentary and art practice, and is broadly concerned with the democratisation of both the real and the ‘staged’ image.
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Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli’s collaborative project, One bed, two blankets, seventy-six rules, will be on display in Room 2 of Copeland Gallery, as part of Peckham 24, May 16-25.
Image credit © Sabine Hess & Nicolas Polli from the series One bed, two blankets, seventy-six rules