Muddy Waters
CHRISTTO & ANDREW

With Muddy Waters Christto & Andrew explore how beauty can be objective through the awareness of or-dinary characters and objects. Christto Sanz and Andrew Weir live and work in Doha, inside the Qatar Gulf, but they are not native of the country; this condition of ‘expatriates’ reveals their attention and curiosity towards what happens around them, and to the unexpected changes in economical, social, cultural spheres of the city and the country where they work and live. This punctual observation was the starting point for their first body of work Unparalleled Objectives, in which they explored the concept of identity and the impact of globalization in a transitional context. Their position of outsiders allows their gaze to be non-conventional (and traditional) on the Middle East; working as a team also allows them to develop a complex and shared language, analyzing the photographic medium as a creator of images standing between the real and the technologically-built world of Qatar.

Christto Sanz (Puerto Rico, 1985) and Andrew Jay Weir (South Africa, 1987) met each other in 2009 in Barcellona, where they both used to study. They now live and work in Doha, Qatar. Christto & Andrew’s practice evolves as a symbiotic process strengthened by a cross-pollination of their differing backgrounds. Together they produce photography, mixed media objects and videos exploring social identities, the me-dia and reinterpretations of history. Since the inception of their collaboration in 2012 they have exhibited at Katara Art Center, Doha (2014); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, (2015); Espai Tactel, Valencia – Spain (2016), East Wing Gallery, Doha (2016), Unseen Photo Fair and Festival, Amsterdam (2016); Museu No-gueira da Silva, Braga – Portugal (2016); NRW Forum, Dusseldorf (2016); NonostanteMarras, Milan (2016); Kraftwerk, Berlin (2017). In 2014 they were selected by Foam Magazine as Foam Talent. In 2018 they got shortlisted fot the New Discovery Award of Les Rencontres de la Photographie Festival in Arles.