Para Site and Lensational are pleased to present Photographese, a pop up exhibition featuring the works of 15 domestic workers who participated in the photography workshops organized by Lensational Academy.
Starting from this April, Para Site has been collaborating with Lensational on a series of photography workshops, Lensational Academy, designed especially for domestic workers and taking place on Sundays in Para Site’s Education Room. These workshops are part of Para Site’s ongoing Hong Kong Migrant Domestic Workers Project, a long-term initiative aimed at engaging the domestic worker community through collaboratively organised public programmes. Founded in 2013 in Hong Kong, Lensational is a social enterprise, which aims to empower women in developing countries economically and emotionally through equipping them with digital cameras and photography training. Lensational Academy is a year-long collaboration, using the art works presented in Para Site exhibitions as teaching references. The workshops are also meant to facilitate a dialogue between different communities and deepen the understanding and appreciation of art.
Photographese is a group exhibition that gathers a selection of photographs taken by theLensational Academy participants. Through the learning and practice of taking photos, the participants found a common language via photography, and discovered that no matter who you are, there is a world where one can feel the freedom to express themselves through the lens of a camera.
In addition to the Photographese exhibition, Lensational will also launch a fundraising event in partnership with Daughters Rising, an organisation that works with stateless Burmese women who have no official identity or citizenship in Thailand and are denied access to formal education, healthcare and employment, and aggressively targeted by traffickers. In order to make the stories of these women known, Lensational has designed limited edition postcards featuring the photographs taking by Lensational’s photography students in Thailand. All donations collected from the postcards will go towards the continuation of Lensational’s empowering programmes that have reached more than 300 women across the globe in the last three years.
Postcards will be available at Para Site, and for more information please see: http://lensational.org
Lensational Academy is made possible through generous support from the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.
