Rotkopf
Artist Statement
It all comes back to the land, and our relationships to it. My art practice is rooted in a deep questioning of site/sight: shifting perspective from a passive landscape to a living land with sentience and its own stories.
Within this context, my photography is engaged in what I call ‘political landscape’ work: the reframing of environments as inextricably linked to geo-political struggle. Growing up across languages, continents and cultures, I approach globalised systems from a transnational perspective, building long form investigations into the landscapes and structures of capitalism and colonialism.
Coming of age in an era of ecological collapse and systemic instability, I use photography as an investigative medium to understand the direction we are heading in, to unearth the root causes of the crises we are living through and to manifest the hope we will need for healing and liberation in the times to come.
Bio
Red Rotkopf (b. 1994) is a London born visual artist, investigative researcher and land rights activist of Mexican-American and French-Tunisian descent. Movement, travel and migration lead his practice and inform the wide array of interconnected geographies that are present his projects.
Balancing a documentary and subject-laden approach with a sensitivity towards creating more symbolic works, Red has continuously experimented with analog methods and unorthodox printing techniques in order to reveal a more experiential and spiritually aligned relationship to the world, one that calls attention to the underlying forces that shape it.
Red’s organizing exists inside and outside institutions by centering the struggles of Indigenous people for their land and autonomy through commitment to direct action, education and directing institutional resources to frontline land & water defenders in their respective territories.
Red has just released his first monograph: Wind in the Cage (2024), available through the publisher Allowing Many Forms.
contact: redrotkopf@live.co.uk
CV / portfolio available upon request
© 2022 by Red Rotkopf