NADJA GROUX

Until now, I have used the camera as an autobiographical and narrative tool. Most of my works are photo-based image-sequences based on my own experiences that evolve into narrative developments. My photo work relates to performance art in that sense that I use images of my own intimate space and my own body as the subject of a story I deliver to the outside world. However, my art is presently leading to the choreography of foreign space. I intend to use foreign subjects and tri-dimentional installations where the viewers complete the actual work by interacting with the environments I have created. Viewing my art works should be a cinematic experience and involve the viewer in an intimate relationship with the piece that would leave him or her with a mental projection of a narrative to be interpreted or reappropriated.As an artist my goals are: to develop an interesting dialogue with the viewers of my work; to develop exhibition opportunities of my artwork and to participate in the development of art communities.

My work has been shown in various venues in France, England, Colombia and in New York. In New York, I have shown my work at Galapagos (Williamsburg, Brooklyn), at the A+A Gallery in the Lower East Side (Manhattan), at the New York Independent Art Fair ‘Frere‘, the LFL gallery, the 16Beaver space, at Columbia University and the UN. - I have also participated in the activities of various artists collectives in New York. From 1999 to 2000, I was part of ‘air-Brooklyn‘, a Williamsburg artists association that no longer exists. This allowed me both to exhibit my work and to curate shows. - With the 16Beaver group, a collection of artists who explore esthetic and critical theories, I have created a performance for Access Zone at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

The piece was a performance in which I was ‘working the crowd’ both like a spy and a street photographer, taking the photos of the events, the people around the events, and then having them in the info area. This project was an attempt to show ‘hidden’/ ‘unconscious’ collaboration. - I am writing my Ph.D. in Anthropology for Cambridge University (United-Kingdom) on the distinct spatial representations of the Maku Indians of Colombian Amazonia and of the coca growers who come from urban area and invade their territory. In the end, I believe that my artwork is done through the eyes of an anthropologist and I am now developing a project with Palestinian children called ‘Children of Conscience’ that fuses anthropology and art as well as humanitarian intervention.

- My commercial photographs are represented by SLPstock, a photo agency under contract with TimePix and I am currently collaborating with Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, assisting in the photo documentation of their work, specifically in South America among indigenous populations and in Israel/Palestine.