Reframing Family
Feminist Perspectives

Reframing Family: Feminist Perspectives Through the Lens ©Goethe-Institut Chennai

International photo residency unites female photographers across four countries to reimagine family, culminating in curated exhibition in Sofia, June 2026.

Feminist Perspectives Through the Lens: An international photo residency connecting Chennai, Budapest, and Sofia brings together female-identifying photographers from Germany, India, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Rooted in local contexts and linked through a shared programme, participants explored and reimagined the idea of family through feminist perspectives.

The residency culminates in an exhibition at Goethe-Institut Sofia, curated by Dr. Kallina Brailsford, opening on 25 June 2026.

PARTICIPANTS

She is a visual artist working with conceptual and documentary photography. Her practice explores care, motherhood, memory, and belonging through domestic spaces, family archives, and everyday life, drawing on lived experience as a woman, immigrant, and mother to reflect on how identity is socially and politically shaped.
She is a media artist working at the intersection of time-based media, experimental film, and video art. Her practice centers on memory, female identity, and the poetic reworking of archival materials. In her current project, she explores addiction within family history, examining self-authenticity amid inherited roles and social expectations.
SIe begann ihre fotografische Laufbahn erst in ihren späten Vierzigern, nachdem sie zuvor im Radio und im Dokumentarbereich gearbeitet hatte. Heute ist sie als freiberufliche Kulturjournalistin, Videoeditorin und Fotografin tätig und beschäftigt sich mit menschlichen Bewältigungsstrategien in rauen, vor allem urbanen Umgebungen. Sie hatte fünf Einzelausstellungen in Mexiko und Ungarn und nahm an zahlreichen Gruppenausstellungen teil.
She is a Bulgarian based artist with half of her roots being Iranian. Her work is self-reflective and rooted to a great degree in a documentary manner. Childhood, cultural specificities, complex family bonds, and motherhood hold a special place in her artistic exploration.
She is an emerging interdisciplinary artist, interested in themes related to synchronicity, time, reality, collective consciousness, western individualism, and feminism through photography, video art, installations, land art, and performance as a medium.
Rooted in photography, her practice spans archival research and design-based mixed media, from artist books to participatory installations. Through a feminist and decolonial lens, she examines memory, archives, and intergenerational transmission, questioning whose histories are preserved or erased. Environmental concerns are explored as part of broader injustices shaped by colonial and patriarchal systems.
She is a Bulgarian photographer working with long-term photographic projects rooted in personal experience. Her work explores acceptance, difference and human connection, using photography as a way of understanding, acceptance and visibility.
She is an architect and emerging visual artist based in Chennai, India. Working across video, photography, and installation, her practice examines how rituals and cultural traditions inscribe expectations onto women’s bodies. Through symbolism and performance, her work questions inherited roles and reflects her yearning for freedom from them.
She is a Berlin-based photographer and artist. She is known for synthesizing photography, video, text, archival material, and ephemera into expansive installations and small, carefully curated books. Her projects mostly tackle stories of violence, loss and trauma, power structures and the unseen.

The residency hubs

Thematic workshops and conversations led by local and international facilitators
Collaborative exercises connecting residents across the three cities
Community engagements and field visits to explore local interpretations of family and feminist thought
Studio time and peer feedback sessions supporting the development of individual and collaborative photographic works
Curated meetings with artists, activists, and cultural practitioners
Intercity digital exchanges, enabling participants to see and respond to each other’s evolving projects

How it works

The parallel structure enables photographers to root their work in local contexts while participating in a broader dialogue that spans cultures, generations, and feminist perspectives. Throughout the residency, artists will examine how family can be a site of identity, tension, empowerment, or reinvention — and how photography can reveal these shifting dynamics.

The works created during the residency will culminate in a joint exhibition in Sofia in June 2026, featuring contributions from all three residency cities.

The residency period is designed to foster deep artistic development, intercultural collaboration, and lasting international networks among emerging and established photographers.

Local partners

Budapest: Hosted byaqb (art quarter Budapest)with introduction to the Hungarian art scene, dark room on demand and portfolio review.

Chennai: Hosted byChennai Photo Biennale, with access to a darkroom and professional facilities.

Sofia: Mentored byDeystvie(LGBTQI+ advocacy organisation in Bulgaria).

Reframing Family Feminist Perspectives

PARTICIPANTS

Betül Aydin

Gabriella Vincze-Bába

Agnes Bihari

Anabelle Moghadam

Arthi Duraisamy

Helia Jafarzadeh

Blagovesta Semkova

Dhivya Ravishankar

Sina Niemeyer

The residency hubs

How it works

Local partners

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Reframing Family
Feminist Perspectives