ARTIST STATEMENT
This work speaks to the isolation felt during the pandemic and heightened by our fraught political and social landscape. I’ve been thinking about the notion of time, and how slow and surreal the days can seem, particularly as darkness comes and winter sets in. Prolonged domesticity can be claustrophobic, yet living within myself is also a consolation, allowing me to delve deep into a universe of my own making. I have found solace in making self portraits that take place in an unspecified time, allowing me to weave together thoughts about home, isolation, longing and memories. This project is about evasion and about creating a fantasy life. It is also about a woman in midlife who feels like she is disappearing.
I’ve been reading and looking at a lot of art, notably the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershoi, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth. They have all inspired this project.
Making these photographs are a means of escape for me, a way to slip into another world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sharon Draghi’s work explores intimacy and the solitariness of one’s inner world. By mixing candid and staged imagery, she creates open-ended narratives existing in the space between what is real and what is imagined. She is also interested in examining how our environment contextualizes and illuminates our daily lives. Her work has been exhibited at The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The Torpedo Factory Arts Center, The Maria V. Howard Arts Center, Foley Gallery, The Baldwin Photographic Gallery, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Filter Photo, the Texas Photographic Society, The Photography Show by AIPAD, and at the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, among others. She has been featured in several publications, including Float Photo Magazine, TagTagTag Magazine, It’s Nice That and Photo District News. She is represented by FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona.
© Sharon Draghi