Here, waiting
Belgium
2020
Thousands of refugees are waiting for their fate to be decided in asylum centres scattered throughout Belgium. Since 2015, Maroussia Prignot and Valerio Alvarez have regularly visited one of these centres to carry out a long-term project on this subject. In order to illustrate the complexity of this situation, they make multiple creative efforts in collaboration with the centre’s residents: they photograph them and invite them to join workshops to work on the resulting images.
Some reinvent their portrait, others edit the pictures, transforming the view point of the photographs, giving them continuity or, conversely, creating a clash.The use of photocopier to create portraits that contrast with the administrative documents required for asylum applications exposes the methods of the bureaucratic machine.
With the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International and Wallonie-Bruxelles Centre
Portfolio
About the artist
Maroussia Prignot and Valerio Alvarez were both born in Belgium in 1981 and 1976. They have worked together on photographic projects since 2015. Based on the premise that any image is a construction rather than a faithful reproduction of “reality”, their approach aims to be integrative, setting up workshops in collaboration with the people they photograph. Their first book, Here, Waiting, has been published by APE.