Lot #36 Rena Effendi Cairo, Egypt Anna's deer heads. Crow Hill, Spirit Lake., 2013 C Print, edition 1 of 10 20 x 20 inches Range: $1,100 – 1,500
Rena Effendi: is an Azerbaijani photographer who lives in Cairo. She was born in 1977 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and grew up in the uSSR, witnessing her country’s path to independence— one marred by war, political instability, and economic collapse. From the outset, Effendi focused her photography on issues of conflict, social justice, and the oil industry’s effect on people and the environment.
In 2011, she received the Prince Claus Fund Award for Cultural Development and moved to Cairo where she has been focusing on issues surrounding the Egyptian Christian minority in the postrevolution era. For this project, she received a grant from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund. In 2012, Effendi was short-listed for the Prix-Pictet Global Award for Photography and Sustainability, for her series documenting life of the survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Effendi’s involvement with World
From 2002 to 2008, Effendi followed a 1,700-kilometer pipeline
Press Photo goes back to 2005, when she was a participant in the
through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey documenting the
Joop Swart Masterclass. In 2012, she was a selector for, and later
impact this multibillion-dollar project had on impoverished
contributor to, the organization’s Reporting Change project.
farmers, fishermen, and other citizens. This six-year journey became her first book Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives Along the Pipeline, published in 2009, and an exhibition that Museum Director Laurel Reuter saw in the Istanbul Biennial and brought to North Dakota in the winter of 2011. The project received numerous awards, including a Getty Images Editorial grant, a Fifty Crows International Fund Award, a Magnum Foundation Caucasus Photographer Award, and a Mario Giacomelli Memorial Fund Award.
Rena Effendi turns her attention to Spirit Lake. Effendi was one of six artists selected by the North Dakota Museum of Art to create art in response to contemporary life on Spirit Lake Reservation. The artists have been commissioned to explore how people live within the landscape, who the people are, and their patterns of intermingling the past and present in contemporary life. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is supporting the artists’ work for three years. Their first exhibition, “Songs for Spirit Lake,” opened in New York City in June 2013.
Over the past ten years, Effendi has covered stories in the post-
Rena Effendi included a suite of photographs with text, including
Soviet region, as well as in Turkey and Iran, including the 2008
the work in this auction. She will return several times to Spirit
Russia-Georgia conflict, women victims of heroin and sex
Lake over the next two years to continue making artwork in and
trafficking in Kyrgyzstan, and the hidden lives of youth in Tehran.
about life in that place.
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