Sistermoon by Siri Kaur in conversation with Jennifer Sakai

Siri Kaur on how decades of photographing her sister strengthened her relationship to the uncanny, the spiritual, and the passage of time.
About this Event

Join us for a conversation with Siri Kaur to celebrate her new book, Sistermoon, a beautiful and tender photographic chronicle of Kaur and her relationship with her family, her sister, and the act of observing transformation. She will be in conversation with Jennifer Sakai, followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).

Artist Siri Kaur has been photographing her family for over 30 years, and her youngest sister, Simran, is the central focus of her forthcoming book, Sistermoon.

Kaur’s photographs are combined with those from her family archive to create an unconventional album, illustrating the cycles of life and transformation, whilst questioning who observes, who is seen and who belongs. Kaur’s biography informs her work. The book opens with a timeline of photographs from her mother’s traditional family, taken in the 1950s by her grandfather. Kaur herself was born into a cult — one image in the book depicts her parent’s wedding at the Happy Healthy Holy Organization, or 3HO in 1976. After Kaur's family left the cult, her father established a rural living community in Vermont where her siblings remain today. Kaur simultaneously belonged to the family and was also an outsider. Her relationship with her family, in particular her sister, was formed and strengthened by creating photographs together. Photography enabled her to observe, catalogue, and connect.

Siri Kaur is an artist and photographer who examines identities that occupy dualities, diversity, and contradiction, with a rigorous eye for the photographic quality of magic. She received her MFA from The California Institute of the Arts, and an MA and a BA from Smith College. Kaur’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Blythe Projects, Cohen Gallery, and Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles; at 99¢ Plus, New York; at the Vermont Center for Photography, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Group shows include those at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Riverside Art Museum, the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Aperture Foundation, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Camera Club of New York, among others. Kaur’s work has been reviewed in ARTFORUM, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She was a Professor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2007-2018 and currently teaches at UCLA. Kaur’s book Sistermoon was published by Photo Void in Fall 2025.

Jennifer Sakai is an artist, photographer, and independent museum curator based in Washington, D.C. She is the recipient of the 2024 Prix Virginia, the international biennial photography prize awarded in Paris, and a 2024 Aperture Creator Prize recipient. Her work was included in the inaugural issue of The Photographer, which debuted at Paris Photo in November 2025. Her ongoing project, When We Return Home, combines contemporary photography and archival research to explore her family’s history of Japanese American incarceration and its legacy across generations. It is currently being developed as a photobook.

Her practice was featured in an eight-page portfolio in M Le Monde, the weekend magazine of Le Monde, in 2025, and her photography has also appeared in Aperture, The Guardian, Vogue, W Magazine, LensCulture, and The Washington Post. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Photo London at Somerset House in 2025 and the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, in June–July 2026.

Her curatorial projects have been presented at the Katzen Museum in Washington, D.C. She is the curator and designer of musician Brian Baker’s photography monograph The Road (Akashic Books, 2025). Sakai serves as President of Transformer in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit arts organization supporting contemporary artists through exhibitions, public programs, and international partnerships.

She teaches in the MFA program at American University. Through photographic, archival, and curatorial practice, her work explores the intersections of memory, history, and landscape.