Hospital

• Photographer
  Mary Farmilant, United States
• Website
  http://www.maryfarmilant.com

My work addresses the fragile nature of living institutions by examining abandoned institutional spaces. These images explore the idea that the human presence remains a part of the history and narrative of these now uninhabited spaces. The jetsam left in the wake of the departing staff recalls a past when the space was integral to the lifeblood of the community. I have recorded the impressions they made on the physical ---space ? a portrait of society, a moment in time that is at once abstract, impressionistic and surreal.

Mary Farmilant is a Chicago-based artist whose ongoing work addresses the fragile nature of living institutions by examining abandoned institutional spaces. Her images explore the idea that the human presence still remains a part of the history and narrative of these now uninhabited spaces. Farmilant?s images are an outgrowth of her background in nursing and her interest in addressing the issues we face today: the current crisis in healthcare, preservation of history versus building anew, the allocation of resources in the community, and the pressure on the middle class.

Farmilant is a founding member of the artist collective Standard Usage Project. The collective is a group of Chicago-based artists whose first collaborative endeavor, In-Between: Emotional Branding for Photography sought to expand the boundaries of the photographic image to emotionally engage the in-between space and activate the artwork and its environment through the senses.

She has been the recipient of several grants and awards; including the 2007 Illinois Artists Fellowship Award, first prize in the 2005 Golden Light Awards Print Competition, the Follett Fellowship, the Albert P. Weisman Memorial Scholarship, and the Stuart & Iris Baum Project Completion Grant. She completed the Summer Residency at Columbia College Book & Paper Center in 2006 and has also been awarded a second artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation in 2008. Her work has been published in the Photography Quarterly?s, ?Photography Now? 2006 and Columbia College Chicago?s 6x6 Book Series, Mementos. She currently teaches photography at Columbia College Chicago.