Featured Artist
Diana Cheren Nygren
We are so very pleased to feature the works of Diana Cheren Nygren. Diana is a MA based, photographer and artist. She is a trained art historian with a focus on contemporary art . She holds a Fine Arts degree from Harvard University and a Masters in Art History from UC Berkely. Her work has been recognized in the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2023. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues nationally and internationally including the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts and Foley Gallery, New York, NY. We couldn’t be happier to feature Diana. -Steven J. Duede
Diana Cheren Nygren’s multi-dimensional work explores themes that permeate art-making today. It’s personal, delves into family history, and uses vintage imagery to create a contemporary conversation. The work is ethereal and haunting; poignant and relatable. Diana’s photographs provide a unique voice with a visual tear that bisects each piece to mark the distance between past and present. The divide, which looks as if two photographs have been torn apart and mismatched back together, is where the conversation occurs.
I love the title of the series, The Persistence of Family. It tugs at you, reminding that even when not visible, family is present. Family history shapes who we are, and its stories (wanted or not) infiltrate our lives—past, present, and future. I have been thinking about how photographers acknowledge the passage of time in their work. How to capture years, or decades, in one image? We often refer to Henri Cartier Bresson’s “decisive moment,” the idea that the camera can capture a particular moment in time, perhaps something the naked eye would not see, and freeze it for eternity. Diana’s work does the opposite. It spans generations of stories, while simultaneously grounding past and present in a shared landscape. The effect is mesmerizing.
Jessica Roscio. Director + Curator, Danforth Art Museum
With these compositions, generations reach for each other across time. I exist in the tension of the space between those who came before me and those who will come after.
The Persistence of Family
Our connections to our ancestors and our descendants often feel stronger than connections to those around us. I often wish my children knew my grandparents. These are portraits of my children as the product of a history of lives lived and intertwined, each effecting and shaping the other.
This series interrogates the role of family relationships and history in shaping our sense of ourselves and our place in the world. I have composited my old family photographs, photographs I took of my children as they grew, and images of the New England landscapes in which my children and I grew up. With these compositions, generations reach for each other across time. I exist in the tension of the space between those who came before me and those who will come after. The project is driven by a longing for connection that makes real those things I hold dear, and by an anxiety around individual responsibility in passing on family history.
Though rooted in personal narratives, the pictures also address both a universal experience and a culturally specific one. My father's parents came to the United States to escape religious persecution in Ukraine. My mother's family came earlier, and were part of a jewish community that tried desperately to erase their history and assimilate into the upper crust of Midwestern American culture. Both of these histories have formed me. Many of their specifics seem lost on my children, although I have watched them become more connected to their history as overt acts of antisemitism in the United States become more commonplace. This work raises questions about genetics in determining identity and connecting people, about the continuity of historical narratives, and suggests that each of us contains both the past and the future. The project is a portrait of a family, a portrait of the artist through the people that have formed her, and an investigation of the individual as part of a historical continuum.
-Diana Cheren Nygren
Diana Cheren Nygren
Diana Cheren Nygren
Diana Cheren Nygren is a photography based artist. Her work explores the relationship of people to the physical environment, and landscape as a setting for human activity. Diana obtained a B.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University and a M.A. in Art History from UC Berkeley. Her training as an art historian focused on modern art, and the relationship of artistic production to its socio-political context. Her work as a photographer is the culmination of a life-long investment in the power of art and visual culture to shape and influence social change, addressing serious questions through a blend of documentary practice, invention, and humor. Her work has exhibited around the globe and has won numerous awards including TIFA Discovery of the Year, PX3 Best New Talent, and LICC Best in Shoot.
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