The other day I attended the exhibition opening and book launch of Voices and Images from the Banlieue, organised by Banlieue Network. The exhibition runs until May 1 at the Glass Tank Gallery, Oxford Brookes, Oxford. I’m a contributing artist to the project.
Here’s some information about it from the Oxford Brookes University site, followed by some of my images from the private view.
“Stigmatised as sites of riots, isolation and deprivation, suburban communities are located at the limits of French society, both literally and metaphorically. The aim of this exhibition is to question the negative clichés attached to the ’banlieue’ by exploring it as a hub of creativity from where new types of voices, discourses and identities are emerging. Based on the outcomes of a Summer School organised in July 2013, the exhibition showcases outcomes of collaboration between international artists and scholars who immersed themselves for a week in the culturally diverse environment of Greater Paris. The private view will be an occasion to launch the bilingual art book ‘Voices and Images of the Banlieue’, a 126-page exhibition catalog with texts and photographs by 25 contributors. Edited by Christina Horvath and Juliet Carpenter, the book has been published with a group of graduate and undergraduate students from Oxford Brookes who were responsible for every aspect from the translations to the copyediting and design..”
Dr. Christina Horvath introduces the evening:
The images below are examples from self-portraiture workshops I led with young people in the Banlieue last summer.
The book: cover image by John Perivolaris.
A visitor checking out one of my images of the Banlieue
Dr. Christina Horvath (in orange cardigan) and contributing academics and artists signing the books:
