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Les juilletistes

2019

c-print photographs

size variable


About

 

“Les juilletistes” comprises 31 photographs arranged like an oversized daily calendar of the month of July 2018 that the artist spent in the island of Lesbos.


While strolling along a beach frequented by locals and tourists, the artist stepped onto the wreckage of an inflatable boat half-buried in the sand—a vessel similar to those used by migrants to reach the Greek shore, seemingly forgotten by local authorities. She made of this haunting remnant a poignant starting point for crafting her own mythology around this tragic yet all-too-common event;

a mythology that revisits the whole story of the island and brings together elements of the current refugee tragedy with references from the Greek own history and the population exchange of the the early 20ies that brought 1.6million refugees back to Greece. 


She came back every day for one month on that beach where the refugee boat landed and took photographs of the sea, capturing seemingly ordinary yet all-too-cliché views of a regular summer day in a Greek island. Subsequently, she meticulously removed any trace of bathers and tourist boats from these 31 photos, covering them with white rectangles. This deliberate act of omission transforms the absence left by these white rectangles into haunting and disruptive ghosts that persistently linger in the viewer's imagination.


Exhibition

 

2023    PAUSE! | CURATORS: JON URIARTE, ELISA MEDDE AND LUIS JUARES | GETXOPHOTO FESTIVAL | GETXO, SPAIN*

            TOURIST! (THE GRAND TOUR)  |  CURATORS: MARIE DEPARIS-YAFIL, ARNAUD COHEN |  BIENALSUR  |  MALLORCA, SPAIN

2020    BEACON  |  CURATOR: CM TURNER  |  THE ALICE AND HARRIS K. WESTON ART GALLERY |  CINCINNATI, UNITED STATES

            LE GRAND TOUR  |  CURATOR: MARIE DEPARIS-YAFIL  |  CENTRE D'ART H2M  | BOURG EN BRESSE, FRANCE

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