Semi- Fiction (2023)
Larissa Araz believes that notion of culture is “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.” In her show Semi-Fiction she depicts the cultures to which she belongs to, in an autobiographical and fictional narrative. While she emphasizes the documentary aspect of photography, she also thinks that photographers are the most talented liars. The artist compares the intersection of this paradox to the auto-fiction (autobiographical fiction) narrative genre in literature, which has recently been popular, and attempts to recognize this approach in her own images. Although the images are undeniably present, the story they portray is fictional in the eyes of the state at times and society at others. Some of the places portrayed in the images no longer exist, while others have never existed. While attempting to uncover her own reality through photography, Araz introduces the imagined reality of those communities and geographies to which she is related. It is up to the viewer to choose which stories she tells.
