* ARTISNETWORK * NETWORK * NETWORK * NETWORK *
The RE:BORDERS collective focuses on sustainable collaboration with international artists, activists and authors.
Parwana
Amiri
The author and human rights activist Parwana Amiri (*2004 in Herat) lived in Greece since 2019 and, as a refugee from Afghanistan, writes texts on the subject of flight and migration. She actively campaigned for better living conditions and human rights on Lesbos and lyrically criticized the situation.
Amiri's voice is that of a young, idealistic writer who believes in the good and stands up for it with all her resources. The poem "The Displaced" in English is both a declaration of love to the homeland she left behind and a determined, militant call for freedom and justice for all displaced persons.
In the photo series "The Home Seekers", created between 2018 and 2021, Sudanese photographer Salih Basheer (*1995 in Omdurman) tells the story of the Sudanese community in Cairo. Against the backdrop of his own experiences of racist discrimination as a student in Egypt, Basheer follows two young men who have left Sudan to find a new home abroad.
Fragmentary black and white portraits, quotes and found material form a coherent thread. In contrast to the stringent narration on the textual level, the narrative on the visual level remains ambiguous and has an enigmatic character. The rough, brittle and imperfect characterize Basheer's motifs.
Salih
Basheer
Vincent
Haiges
Since 2020, documentary photographer Vincent Haiges (*1988 in Worms) has been working on his series "They take the sleep out of our eyes", which was created on Lesbos, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Poland, in the central Mediterranean and in Niger.
It is a powerful exploration of the interplay between borders, migratory movements and border violence. Waiting, fleeing and arriving are recurring motifs. Through the iconic situations, he establishes a connection between his protagonists and the various border locations.
Michél
Kekulé
Michél Kekulé (*1991 in Fulda) combines conceptual landscape photography with documentary portrait. His black and white photography appears timeless at first glance, but thematically it always gets to the heart of our present. It is the people and their stories that he reflects with restraint and sensitivity in his unique style:
The minimalistic title "50_15" conceals intensive experiences on a mission on the Sea Watch 3. For the series, Kekulé accompanied a rescue mission off the Libyan Mediterranean coast in spring 2022 as a photographer. The result is a testimony to a humanitarian and political catastrophe in which at least 15 people drowned.
In her latest site-specific video installation "The Story Told Is Yours", film director, editor and artist Özlem Sarıyıldız (*1978 in Denizli) creates a multi-perspective work with artists who have emigrated to Berlin. She extracts statements from very different migration experiences with which visitors enter into a dialog when they enter the exhibition space.
Memories, confessions, doubts and questions are engraved on bricks that the artist places on the floor, creating a reference to Demnig's world-famous "Stumbling Stones“ (Stolpersteine). Text-based art paired with video work characterizes the signature of Sarıyıldız. The interviewees, who report for just under an hour on green screen, come from nine countries, including Brazil, Iran and Ukraine.
Özlem
Sarıyıldız
Abou Bakar
Sidibé
In his very personal essay films, teacher and filmmaker Abou Bakar Sidibé (*1985 in Abidjan) tells about the challenges of flight and his new beginning in Europe.
By using the camera as his diary, he enables viewers to adopt new perspectives. In addition to authenticity, the greatest quality is that Sidibé captures the entire range of human emotions.
His directorial debut "Les Sauteurs - Those Who Jump" premiered at the Berlinale in 2016 and won numerous awards.
For months, he documents the precarious conditions of refugees on the northern Moroccan Mediterranean coast. They hold out in the direct vicinity of the Spanish enclave of Melilla while they prepare their next escape attempt to the promise of Europe.
Chiara
With her ongoing documentary photographic work "stateless", documentary photographer Chiara Wettmann (*1993), who lives in Berlin and Beirut, presents an intimate picture of stateless people in Lebanon and Côte d`Ivoire.
No state and no law protects stateless people. They are denied basic rights. Today, a person's life is defined by their affiliation to a state.
Having no nationality denies social participation, access to state structures and fundamentally determines everyday life.
The photographs bear witness to mutual trust, not least Chiara Wettmann's intensive engagement with her protagonists, and trigger a palpable closeness in the viewer. For RE:BORDERS, the photographer is responsible for project management and organization in collaboration with the collective.
Wettmann
