Houston Airports is collaborating with FotoFest, a Houston-based contemporary arts organization dedicated to advancing photography and visual culture. A FotoFest installation in the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) Terminal D Connector features large-scale photography produced by Houston I.S.D. students from Jack Yates High School. The installation is part of a citywide biennial project that includes artwork, lectures and performances and draws thousands of international visitors to Houston. This is the first time Bush Airport has served as a FotoFest venue.

"Being selected as a first-time participant in FotoFest underscores the crucial role of Houston Airports in connecting millions of passengers to Houston’s eclectic arts scene,” said Alton DuLaney, Curator of Public Art for Houston Airports. “This cultural collaboration allows us to showcase the incredible talents of Houston I.S.D. students while contributing to the dynamic and immersive experience that’s catapulted Houston to become known as Art City and its airports the new museum.”  

CRITICAL GEOGRAPHY

The FotoFest Biennial 2024 central exhibition, Critical Geography, reexamines traditional Western and historical understandings of geography while expanding these investigations to new realms. Borrowing its name from the subdiscipline of geography that questions and challenges power structures, inequality, and the dominant ideologies shaping physical space, Critical Geography explores how space, place, and communities are influenced by social, economic, ecological, and political forces. By critically analyzing these dynamics, the works in the exhibition provoke conversations around social justice, environmental sustainability, and transformative change.

“Our intent is that the 2024 Biennial, featuring both existing and newly commissioned works from local and international artists, will allow viewers to engage in important dialogues around the social dimensions of space and our shared planet,” says Steven Evans, Executive Director of FotoFest. “We look forward to once again celebrating Houston’s vibrant art and photo community while embracing these new perspectives around place-making, the image, and geography.”

Critical Geography features a diverse range of image-based practices, representing artists from photographers and storytellers whose works shed light on systemic oppression, violence, and urgent environmental concerns to image-makers who appropriate mapping, social media, and technology to explore inequality in colonial and post-colonial contexts. The exhibition highlights a range of unorthodox strategies employed to construct new narratives around place and community while imagining alternative organizations of social space. The Biennial exhibition includes several site-specific works and new commissions by FotoFest.

FotoFest at Bush Airport:

Mark Menjívar: Looking Up (Voices from Jack Yates High School)
Artist: Mark Menjívar

On display at IAH Terminal D Connector Gallery through December 31, 2024