Angela Casagrande

To Angela Kahoali’i Casagrande, the camera is her third eye. Her lens-based process creates a visual assemblage of reconstruction and remembrance. For Casagrande, photography is a tool that encapsulates a moment in time, forging it into a tactile record of memory. From this, she retells the stories of personal and familial narratives utilizing a variety of photographic methods and mixed media. Materials such as wood, bone, and encaustic wax help to create visual tactility to her work, bringing her photographs from a singular plane into the third dimension.
The concept of memory as an element of liminal space, the place a subject is in during a transitional period, is the core of Casagrande’s work. She describes it as a metaphorical ghost; a phantom that is visible yet intangible. It is the specter that lingers through the halls of time. Casagrande acknowledges that memory is a delicate yet pliable substance that is created and passed along. Her work is a continual examination of this process, tracking the remnants of a perpetual history.