The Land of Promises is an invitation to explore transnational and transracial adoption in China and Belgium, both in the present day and in the past. One can imagine that during China’s one-child policy era Belgium represented “the promised land” for baby girls whose parents had to give them up. And yet, as Youqine Lefèvre’s work unfolds, and she moves from her parents’ archives to her own images, the perspective shifts. When she visits her birth country, China becomes the land of promises — of finding her roots? Her birth family? Herself?
Such an ambitious promise is easy to break, which explains the palpable melancholy in Youqine Lefèvre’s pictures. Her work also conveys the ambiguity of her position: as an adult adoptee visiting her birth country, she is “an outsider within”, so close to her photographic subjects and yet so far away. From this perspective, art is the new land of promises for Lefèvre, who uses multiple supports (film, paper, etc.) in her photographic practice to create a world where she can live her truths. The work produced by the artist thus generates the artist. Youqine Lefèvre is not only reclaiming her own narrative, but challenging the status of archives that in her hands become both art and a political statement.
Ultimately, The Land of Promises is an invitation to decentre whiteness and the Global North in the visual narrative surrounding transnational and transracial adoption.
- Text by Amandine Gay (.TIFF)
Giulia Parlato (b.1993) is an Italian visual artist based in London and Palermo.
She graduated from the BA (Hons) Photography at London College of Communication in 2016 and from the MA Photography at the Royal College of Arts in 2019.
Her practice delves into histories, myths and cultural heritage, involving photography and video. She analyses the historical use of photography as a document of truth, specifically in its scientific and forensic uses, and challenges this language, by creating a new space in which staged scenes take place. The melancholic and frustrating state, caused by humans’ impossibility to understand the past constitutes the foundation of her work.
Giulia’s work is shown nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions including Podbielski Contemporary Gallery (Milan, 2021), Photo London Fair (London, 2020), Photo Fringe (Brighton, 2020), Palazzo Rasponi 2 (Ravenna, 2020), Galleria Cavour for Photo Open Up (Padova, 2020), Gare Du Nord for Paris Photo (Paris 2019), Kunstgebaude for Soft Power Palace Festival (Stuttgart, 2018); and featured extensively in printed and online publications. She is the recipient of the BJP International Photography Award (2021), the Innovate Grant (2020), Camera Work Award (2020) and the Carte Blanche Éstudiants Award (2019).
Talks and Commissions include Paris Photo, The Photographers' Gallery, Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts, and Art Licks.
She is a founder member of Ardesia Projects, a curatorial platform dedicated to contemporary photography, and of the Carte Blanche Collective.
Giulia's work is held in public and private collections.
She has won the LUX Prize twice for Professional Photography in the Documentary category. She has also participated, since 2008, in various solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the United States and at fairs like Paris Photo, ARCO, Estampa o London Art Fair. In October 2016 she published her photobook Vera y Victoria and in 2019 Gabriel, both with the French publisher André Frère Éditions and presented in Paris Photo.
She also published the newspaper DÚO-A Sobre el viaje por carretera con desconocidos (About the road trip with strangers) (edited by Phree), together with the writer Miguel Ángel Hernández. In 2018 her works have been exhibited in Barcelona (Can Basté), Madrid (Feria Estampa y Pilar Serra’s Gallery), Baracaldo (Festival Baffest), Arles (Feria Cosmos), Vitoria (Sala Amárica), Alcobendas' Art Center and Marseille (Galería Retine Argentique), among others, and in 2019-2020, in Tigomigo Gallery (Terrassa, Barcelona), F22 Foto Space (Hong Kong), KLAP Maison pour la Danse (Marsella), the London Art Fair and Desenfocada Gallery (Málaga). As an artist, Sáez is represented by the Pilar Serra Gallery in Madrid, the Fifty Dots Gallery in Barcelona and the Institute Agency in Los Angeles.
Agata is working as a freelance photojournalist and a cinematographer. Her work has been published in DER SPIEGEL, Stern, DIE ZEIT, SZ-Magazin, The Guardian, ARTE TV, ARD, NZZ, DUMMY Magazine, Greenpeace Magazine, Taz, BuzzFeed, Free Mens World, Spiegel Online, Zenith, SPIEGEL WISSEN, Politiken, Zeit Online, Gazeta Wyborcza, Newsweek.
Agata's projects have been supported by numerous grants, including: the Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, Journalismfund.eu, Robert Bosch Stiftung and VG Bild-Kunst.
A certain openness to manipulation and reuse of images, inherent in the graphic design work, as well as a particular attention to project and research, rather than instinctuality alone, are characteristics that remain visible in the author's practice even after converting to photography. The awareness of images’ hybrid and ambiguous nature is in fact a constant subtext of his work, which varies from time to time between a more conceptual approach to photography and a more descriptive and documentary one, often mixing the two. Alongside his personal research, he collaborates with the collective Vaste Programme, founded with Giulia Vigna and Alessandro Tini in 2017, to experiment with post-photography, installations and new media.
His work explores aspects of religious belief, mysticism and phenomenology and aims to understand how photography can be used to communicate such themes. Michael’s latest body of work, Noema (2020), follows the search for the Virgin Mary’s presence in two locations in which she has reportedly been seen.
Benedek Bognár (1986) lives and works in Budapest. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in photography from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. In 2012 he studied performance and video art at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallinn on an Erasmus scholarship. His series of works address issues related to current social phenomena, aiming to create unusual or new perspectives. He is primarily concerned with the symptoms of virtuality, digitalization, and the age of image-based communication. In his work, he often reflects on photography itself as a medium capable of creating the illusion of an objective representation of the world and its role in the process of human cognition. In his recent work, he has been concerned with modern myths and the general human need for irrational stories to explain the world. In his thesis, Genesis, he examined how the entertainment and advertising industries use the patterns, archetypes, and topoi from which humanity’s ancient great myths were built, from the perspective of the functioning of consumer society. In his work CUI PRODEST, which he is working on under the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship, he deals with the pseudo-news and disinformation of the world, which are based on irrational contexts and enemy images instead of scientific paradigms.
Time at work, this time which rushes, always too short, it is this which Csilla Klenyànszki addresses in her performative and photographic games. Of course, this artistic approach is accepted, being defined by a sum of constraints which might be resumed here as follows: the daily siesta of a child, the domestic setting imposed by this siesta, or thirty minutes for creation. Pillars of Home is a series of variations upon a single theme that is as dizzying as it is absurd. In thirty minutes flat, within this confined frame and with no more than plants, plastic beakers, a vacuum cleaner, table, chair, teapot and other utensils (with the inclusion of her own body, an object which she does not hesitate to contribute and contort), this artist provides ninety-six answers held in a fragile balance between the floor and the ceiling of her apartment. We are amused by one, stunned by another. Yet none of them impose a superiority as, more than just the form, it is the process and the accumulation of experiences which the photographer wishes to highlight: not the beauty of the sculpture nor the skill of its assembly, but the action of an artist who wishes to oppose time with a mischievous and vital fantasy. Ephemeral, yes, but certainly not trivial.
With a background in sociology, Alejandra is interested in individuals and how the communities to which we belong define or identifies us. This is a very popular issues today with so many social movements, political instabilities, a constant search for identity or even the questioning of women role in society, but the interesting thing of this artist is how she takes these issues into concrete cases, but the lecture of her work could be elevated to more global concepts. Her particular artistic approach and experience make this photographer an ideal choice for supporting her projection.
After finishing his studies as an interior architect, he was eager to learn to work the camera. In an auto-didactic way, he developed his own unique vision on fashion photography and later on managed to fuse his moroccan roots, tradition and culture with the western world he grew up with. The last years his Moroccan DNA is flowing more and more through his veins and his works. The urge to show this rich moroccan heritage through an artistic eye is present in everything he portraits and the inspiration he gets from his motherland is endless.
https://mousmous.com/
Julia Gaes (b. 1993) lives and works in Hamburg. Her work is primarily focused on ideas of body image and identity. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Photography at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld in 2018, and received a Master of Arts in Photography at the HAW Hamburg in 2022. Gaes has exhibited her work at a range of international festivals, including the Triennial of Photography, Hamburg; Kolga Festival, Tbilisi; and Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam.
Wbsite: www.juliagaes.de
Cosmin Gârleșteanu (b. 1984) is a photographer and video editor based in Bucharest, Romania. With a background in economic studies – he attended the Economic Studies Academy– he felt he would like a more creative career and shifted towards radio and then video editing.His images have been published in a range of magazines, whilst his work was featured in various group and solo exhibitions during London, Brussels and Miami Street Photography Festivals or Eyeshot Open Call. His photobook, Bucharest, was published in 2023.
Oxiea Villamonte (b. 1995) was born in the USA and raised in the Netherlands. She holds both a BA and MFA in Photography from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Shortly after graduating, her book – Next of Kin – was published by Stockmans Art Books. Through self-portraits and archival material, the project presents the artist’s search for identity in Chicago, where her mother spent her formative years. More recently, Villamonte embarked on a 10-month journey through America by Amtrak, guided by photographs from her parents’ archive. Her work is highly personal, guided by a fascination with identity, and with the legacy of her upbringing in the choices she makes.
Their ongoing work focuses on the relationship between climate change, development, environmental degradation, human rights and geopolitics through which they consider how documentary film and photography inherently reveal the presence of pervasive power relationships , power structures and the mechanism of othering within the political landscape of our globalized society. Through a study of the landscape, the portrait and the still life they consider the shifting cultural meaning of nature, how this is changed by the definition of the Anthropocene and how we may decolonize nature.
They have worked extensively in climate change stress zones producing work in China, Nepal, Bangladesh, Uganda and Laos PDR. Their work has been exhibited internationally including exhibitions at Krakow Photomonth (2016), Fotofestiwal (2014), Fotograf festival (2014), Mpm Gallery (2015) and The Grey House Foundation (2016).
Florian Amoser (1990), lives and works in Olten. Florian graduated in 2017 with honors from ECAL in photography. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from ETH Zurich (2011). After working for the last five years in the BA and MA Photography at ECAL as well as conducting the research project Automated Photography (with Milo Keller, Claus Gunti), he is now focussing on his personal artistic practice. Florian is also part of the curation team of annual young art show JKON / Junge Kunst Olten. Florian Amoser’s works explore the different aspects of human perception. Since photography’s invention, human beings use it as an instrument to expand the limits of their observational capacity. Consequently, the technological development of the photographic apparatus has a significant influence on our perception. Florian Amoser builds his own original tools for his artistic works, which make new photographic images possible. His photographs bear witness to a material dissolution of the environment in which the view of physical reality is strongly influenced by experiences in digital space.
Spiros Zervoudakis was born in Athens. He studied Mathematics in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki , continued with Post Graduate studies (Msc) in Applied Mathematics in Technical University of Crete and Philosophy of Mathematics in National University of Athens.
His interest in Photography started when he attended classes on the medium in the Photographic Group of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and continued by attending seminars and workshops. He has presented his work in individual and group Exhibitions both in Greece and abroad and his works have been awarded prizes in National and International Competitions. His works are exhibited in the “Benaki Museum”, in the Benetton Foundation’s collection, in Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (MOMus), in the Municipal Gallery of Chania, in “Contemporary Art Museum – Olivepress” as well as in many private collections in Greece and abroad. He lives, works and creates in the city of Chania, Crete.
http://zervoudakis.eu/
Jošt Dolinšek (1997, Ljubljana, SI) is a lens-based visual artist. His practice is predominantly stemming from photographic medium and is expanded into moving imagery, installation and sculpture.Dolinšek mostly works on long-term projects, exploring the existential experience of environment and time and our relationship towards both. His work is centred upon the questions on uncertainty — of perspective, duration and change. Form and materiality pose as one of the crucial elements of his works, and are often strongly related to the process and the inquiry behind them.In 2023, he graduated from a MFA Photography programme at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg (SE) and in 2020, he earned a BA in Psychology at the University of Ljubljana (SI). Among others, he has exhibited his works in Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (DE), Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana (SI) and Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg (SE). He lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden.