L’ENGAGEMENT
at the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation
PROGRAM ASSOCIATED WITH LES RENCONTRES DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE 2024
from july 1rst to september 29th, 2024
18 rue de la Calade — Arles
L’Engagement The exhibition explores the complexity of commitment through the prism of migration, globalization and identity crises. Through the works of various artists, it raises the dilemmas of the concept of legality and the tensions of belonging. The exhibition prompts us to reflect on our own responsibility and commitment, while paying tribute to the work of reportage.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the photographic prize awarded by the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation, we pay tribute to Camille Lepage, whose talent as a photojournalist remains engraved in our memories, despite her tragic death. Her unwavering commitment to bearing witness to the world’s often little-known realities deserves to be celebrated and honored.
Commitment manifests itself in a multitude of forms, from social movements to struggles against police violence, to questioning surveillance devices. Electronic waste, or E-Waste, raises fundamental questions about the ecological and human challenges posed by trans-border waste flows. They highlight issues such as corruption and the limits of legality, and are at the heart of activism and committed artistic projects.
The exhibition also probes our personal commitment to society, the search for meaning in our lives and our actions. It reveals our passions, our desires, but also our deepest fears. The commitment is artistic, sensory and militant, as this program cannot be considered without taking into account the human and political crises currently afflicting the world.
Once again this year, Fotohaus enriches the Foundation's proposals by broadening the theme of commitment. With Beliefs and Existence, the artists propose visual answers to the fundamental existential question: how to live a human life?
Artists
Anas Aremeyaw ANAS, Chun-Yi CHANG, Muntaka CHASANT, Thaddé COMAR, Ljubiša DANILOVIĆ, Chiara DAZI, Guido GAZZILLI, Bénédicte KURZEN, Camille LEPAGE, Diego MORENO, Philippine SCHAEFER, Jun-Jieh WANG, Collectif Advantage Austria, Collectif LesAssociés, Institute Contemporary.
Guest curators Verdiana ALBANO, Anne-Marie BECKMANN, Christel BOGET, Christian JUNGWIRTH, Klaus KEHRER, Reanne LEUNING, Cornelia SIEBERT, Enrico STEFANELLI.
Curator BASILETTI Florent
Hommage
Camille LEPAGE
It’s hard to believe that it’s already ten years since Camille Lepage was killed. Through this commemoration, we remember her exceptional talent and dedication as a photojournalist, particularly in conflict zones such as the Central African Republic. In 2014, Camille Lepage was awarded the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation’s first Award of Excellence, a well-deserved recognition of her work. Tragically, however, she did not have the opportunity to receive it in person. A ceremony was organized during the exhibition at Galerie Huit, where Maryvonne Lepage, Manuel Rivera-Ortiz and the mayor of Arles were present to pay tribute to Camille Lepage. Today, as the world continues to face complex realities, we honor Camille Lepage’s commitment, courage and determination.
partners Association Camille Lepage - On est ensemble, Innova Art
How was your dream ?
Thaddé COMAR
How was your dream ? is a photographic project realized during the Hong Kong protests between June and October 2019. This work deals with new forms of demonstration and insurrection in our post-contemporary era dominated by seamless control societies. Five years before, in Hong Kong, the “Umbrella Movement“ was quickly repressed by state and police violence. In 2019 the democratic uprising that began in May, gave itself the means to continue. Faced with a sophisticated arsenal of control (facial recognition, geolocation, carding, eavesdropping, infiltration, water cannons, tear gas, helicopter, sonic weapons, non-lethal rifles), the Hong Kong demonstrators have developed a repertoire of techniques based on principles of invisibility and intraceability (anonymity, lasers of blindness, pocket of faraday, vision by drones, masks of all kinds, encrypted communication etc…), allowing them to mitigate the effects of the repression. These new devices, which contribute to the transformation of the forms of struggle and resistance, however, push for the gradual erasure of individual singularities. In the future, will societies and sophisticated systems of control, force us to make our human singularities disappear? Will this be done in favor of a new common identity ?
curator Florent BASILETTI
partners Fondation Act On Your Future, Epson
Georgia - Une histoire des migrations
Ljubiša DANILOVIĆ
Georgia is the name of the ship that brought a certain Ljubiša Danilovic to New York in 1906, a ni neteen-yearold Montenegrin dreaming of a different life. A century later, in Butte, a mining town in Montana, the photographer and his namesake began a fictional conversation about exile. In 2021, Ljubiša Danilovic imagines the journey that will take him from his native Montenegro to the United States, repeating a journey comparable in every way to those that thousands of migrants around the world must undertake today. In his book of the same name, Ljubiša Danilovic combines photographs of the town of Butte, of a Montenegro that offers few horizons to young adults who dream of elsewhere, of a nostalgic Montenegro - that of his childhood - of migrants he met in Paris, Calais or Sarajevo, and of others who have spent their lives far from their country of birth... With the same voice, Ljubiša Danilovic tells the small story, but also, of course, the great story of exile. “I have tried to respond in images to the emotional journey of my namesake through his experience of uprooting.“ Alternating text and photographs, black and white and colour, author’s eye and documentary work, Georgia is an imaginary epistolary relationship on the theme of exile, but also and above all a historical perspective on the phenomenon of migration.
curator Florent BASILETTI
partners Fujifilm, Slika Printscenographer Elizabeth GUYON