Ciara J Alberts is an artist currently based in Portland, Oregon. Alberts was born and raised traveling throughout the United States on Reithoffer Shows, a family owned and operated carnival. Her practice is invested in ideas of entertainment, consumption and constructed environments. Her work is continually searching for the poetic friction within these topics and the different modes of representing them using photography. Most recently her work has been exhibited at Black Box Gallery, Newspace Center for Photography, Blue Sky Gallery, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Midway
The first ten years of my life were spent with my family on the traveling carnival, Reithoffer Shows, which they continue to work for today. During 2015, after ten years of spending time off the road, I began traveling with the carnival and my family once again. For this project I used the carnivals inherently theatrical midway as a stand in studio to construct still life images. I also documented my surroundings with a highly intimate understanding of this very public space. Using the photographic experience, the work flows in and out of cultural critique, formal studies, and personal introspection. I am at one insider and outsider, spectator and subject.
To view more of Ciara’s work please visit her website.