Alternative Archives is a 5 person group show that elucidates and responds to the ways in which Western photo-archives subjugate, erase, and control communities to dictate prevailing histories. Each artist questions photographic records to undermine Western archival practices by problematizing the privilege, racial bias, cultural monolism, colonial framing, and linear temporality inherent in Euro-centric archive photography. Recognizing that the seemingly “neutral Western criteria and classifications are in fact tools for maintaining the role of an archive as an imperial project of domination and affirmation”, Alternative Archives asks: what do certain histories look like if they weren’t traditionally dictated by systems of subjugation and marginalization? By mining and appropriating photographic archival tendencies to reconcile historical erasures, oppression, and colonizing, the exhibition attempts to prove how archives can act as sites of resistance, to work against their original objectives, and ultimately undermine sovereign historical propaganda by unearthing and presenting challenging cultural contents.