Carla Liesching

Carla Liesching is a Lecturer in the Department of Art at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and also teaches at Ithaca College and the International Center of Photography. Her interdisciplinary practice spans photography, writing, collage, sculpture, and bookmaking, grounded in her upbringing in apartheid South Africa and focused on the intersections of representation, knowledge, and power.

Her research and artistic work critically engage with colonial histories, race, geography, and the ethics of visual representation. Key areas include anti-colonial resistance, decolonial art practices, visual literacy, self-publishing, and the politics of photography. She explores how dominant knowledge systems are constructed and challenges them through fragmented, subjective narratives.

Liesching’s recent publications and exhibitions reflect a strong trend in hybrid image-text works that blend personal memoir with archival critique. Her acclaimed book Good Hope and projects like Mysterious Island and The Swimmers examine identity, displacement, and the colonial imagination through layered visual and textual strategies.

• Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award, shortlist (2022)
• Rencontres d'Arles Prix du Livre, photo-text category, shortlist (2022)
• Foam Talent, Amsterdam, NL (2022)
• Silver Eye Fellowship Winner, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2022)
• Light Work Grant Winner in Photography, Syracuse, New York (2021)

She has advised socially engaged educational initiatives and contributes to artist-led publishing as Chief Editor of Book Arts Review and a contributor to PUZZAZZ Mag. Her work is supported by grants from Light Work and Silver Eye, and she has exhibited widely, including at Foam Museum and Deutsche Börse Foundation. Liesching is also coordinator of the School of Criticism and Theory, reflecting her deep engagement with critical pedagogy and interdisciplinary discourse.

Her artistic installations and publications function as both aesthetic and scholarly interventions, often merging personal grief with political critique, as seen in In the forest I knew, which connects environmental destruction with personal loss.