L’or et l’orage, Journées Photographiques de Bienne, Bienne, CH
Through a collection of diverse images, Shannon Guerico recounts the confrontation of the human being with the cycles of life. She is particularly interested in the changes of identity resulting from motherhood. Her series of image-objects, assembled as an installation, tells of the ambivalence of a fragile or shattered day-to-day existence: the close, continuous coex- istence of life and death, fear and tenderness, delight and anxiety, magic and frustration. In her visual language, resurgent childhood memories are mixed with animal figures that seem to be taken from dreams, or fantasies evoking the “savage.” Round shapes frequently recur, like echoes of the primal architecture of the belly, of burrows, or of caves, alluding to the tondo, or more precisely the desco da parto (birth tray), a type of Renais- sance allegorical painting created to mark the birth of a first child.
Journées Photographiques de Bienne 2022 – Recover
For its 25th edition, the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography examines restoration and the process of recovery by way of the image. In an era of accelerating social change and of a polarization of society, photography is often used as a filter for protecting oneself from experiencing a reality that can sometimes be intolerable, hostile or even destructive. But the photographic image can also be a means of reconstruction and recovery after personal upheavals or shared disasters. Can images be the beginning of a process of healing?
Mental recovery, construction of identity, historical reconstruction: the artists and projects presented in this year’s edition explore the practice of the image as a tool for restoring a relationship between the individual and the world that has been damaged and sometimes even broken. This year’s exhibition itinerary presents an examination of the weight of a cultural heritage. Some works aspire to restore the feeling of belonging to a community (whether real or virtual), while others aim at rewriting a history.
6.–29.5.2022
Journées photographiques de Bienne