Anastasia Samoylova (born 1984, Moscow; lives in Miami) moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. In 2020 she had her first solo museum exhibition of the ongoing project “FloodZone” at USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. The work is on view at Dot Fiftyone Gallery, in Little River, Miami through September 14. (Advance appointments are encouraged, but not required).
FloodZone is a psychological portrait of life on the knife’s edge of climate change, in the southern United States facing rising sea levels. With over 80 photographs, the book of the project was published by Steidl in 2019. Signed copies of "FloodZone" are available at Leica Store Miami.
In 2020, FloodZone has been shown at many exhibitions in the US and Europe. A full listing of them is on her website. A few highlights were solo exhibitions at Galerie Peter Sillem, Frankfurt; Galerie Caroline O’Breen, Amsterdam; and a group exhibition at the Kunsthaus Wien in Vienna. Images were also shown at “Six Real Matterhorns”, on the facade of the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and at the Walker Evans Revisited exhibit, as part of the Biennale für Actuelle Fotografie in Germany.
Samoylova was awarded a number of grants for “FloodZone”, including the South Arts Fellowship and Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography. She also collaborated with UNESCO Oceanographic Commission’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (@ipcc) when they opened their 52th session in February at @unesco. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and Art Slant Collection in Paris.
Anastasia says: “FloodZone” is my ongoing photographic project reflecting and responding to the problem of rising sea levels. The project began in 2016, when I moved to Miami, my first experience living in a coastal environment. It was the hottest summer on record. Soon after moving I began to realize how the city’s seductive tropical palette concealed the growing dissonance between its booming real-estate market and the ocean’s encroachment on its territory. Last 3 years brought 3 hurricanes to the shore, yet no substantial measures have been taken to address the issue besides the individual efforts to prepare for and retreat during the storms. Water views are prized in the real-estate world, with little regard for building projects’ locations in high-risk flood zones. Investors seem to turn a blind eye to the reality that places like Miami are steadily slipping underwater. Living in Miami is bittersweet: it looks and feels like a paradise, but the only secure roots belong to mangrove trees...... Mixing lyric documentary, gently staged photos and epic aerial vistas, FloodZone crosses boundaries to express the deep contradictions of the place."
A previous body of work, “Landscape Sublime”, explores the connection between the natural environment and its representation through photography. Temporary assemblages are constructed out of internet-sourced images, and re-photographed with a digital camera to produce the final works. Her first monograph, “Landscape Sublime”, was published by In the In-Between Editions in June 2016.
Another body of work was “Breakfasts With”. Samoylova says: “Sometimes photographing an image is a way to really get to know it. To study it through a lens, or within another image, is to really engage with it. So “Breakfasts With” is not so much appropriation as an act of homage. And a recognition of the deep effects that photographs can have on us.”
Another series, “Layovers” are in MIA (terminal G) on permanent display.
Samoylova is now working on another climate change project “The Fire This Time”. She spent several days last year in California in between multiple wildfires (literally standing between), parallel to FloodZone.
Anastasia Samoylova received her MFA from Bradley University in 2011, and her MA from Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, 2007. She was a resident artist at Art Center South Florida/ Oolite Arts in Miami Beach in 2018 - 19, and a short film, “Landscape Sublime”, was produced by Ed Talavera & Dennis Scholl for ArtCenter South Florida. She has also had residencies at The Studios in Mass Moca in Massachusetts and in the Fountainhead in Miami, as well as at Latitude Chicago and in Peoria, Illinois. She is represented by Dot fiftyone Gallery (Miami) and Caroline O’Breen (Amsterdam).
Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Art Forum, The Washington Post, LensCulture, Foam and many other publications.
Samoylova is a former Professor of Photography at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and at Illinois Central College.
