english text 173 points” that are restructuring the Palestinian landscape, creating a territory that is watched and occupied. In fact, because of the particularly dangerous conditions in those places and the fact that Batniji is not authorised to enter the West Bank, she delegated the taking of the pictures to a local photographer. So what we see is a series of not very well finished photographs (not very well framed, imperfectly lit, etc.), which distances them from the aesthetics of the Bechers (always impeccable in their work). On this occasion, as Batniji says, “No aestheticisation is possible. There is no way of understanding these military constructions as sculptural or even as heritage.” Obviously, very similar architectural structures may have very different functions, depending on the socio-political contexts in which they are placed. Taysir Batniji shows a feeling shared with many other artists who divide their life between their country of origin and their country of adoption. Perhaps that is why very many of their works refer to the impossibility of moving peacefully between borders, to the eternal waits at the constant checkpoints, to the rootlessness of forced displacement, to the complex situation of always finding oneself between two cultures and two identities, to the reflection of a shadow that gradually becomes blurred as a metaphor of the disappearance resulting from not feeling at ease in any place. This is certainly a feeling shared with Mohamed Bourouissa (1978), an Algerian artist who lives in Paris. In his series Périphérique (Peripheral), 2007–08, he gives a very lucid dissection of life in the banlieue of Paris, taking as the subjects of his pictures people who have been set aside by the established power and who feel utterly excluded. Bourouissa shows us the power relationships established every day in the most impoverished districts on the outskirts of Paris, the daily drama of the suburbs where he himself grew up, and the completely peripheral status of its inhabitants (economically and socially on the edge, and physically on the other side of the Boulevard Périphérique that surrounds the city of Paris). For example, in some of the pictures in the series, such as La rencontre (The Encounter) or Le téléphone (The Telephone), we can clearly see the constant powerful tension that exists between the various communities of migrants. With just a few glances (which is all he needs) we understand the conflicts between, on the one hand, youngsters from the Maghreb and, on the other, young blacks or young people from Eastern Europe. Each gesture or look or positioning of the body in the urban space is studied, composed in a premeditated way to obtain the desired result, for each picture needs the complicity of the models who are participating to compose this kind of contemporary tableau vivant in which the artist himself takes part as the director of the scene and at the same time as an onlooker. The entire series is first-class testimony, a delicate analysis that, without making any concessions to stereotypes or any kind of sensationalist violence, enables us to understand (going beyond the self-interested views of the media) the profound social and economic differences, the cultural values and the sensations of inclusion and exclusion that are experienced every day in the suburbs of the big European cities. Mathieu Pernot (France, 1970) is another artist who is very concerned with themes such as exile, memory, identity and the cultural rootlessness of “invisible” people, those whom society has no time even to look at. His work keeps well away from sentimentality but shows the dull pain of incomprehension, absence and privation in daily experience degraded to unimagined limits. We can see this in his series of photographs Les Migrants, 2009, which shows a series of objects or shapes of various sizes which turn out be the bodies of Afghan migrants wrapped up in sheets, lying on the ground in the Jardin Villemin in Paris. No part of their bodies can be seen; they are so covered up, so isolated from the outside world, that at first we do not know whether they are dead bodies wrapped in shrouds or people sleeping covered in sheets. Their isolation from the world around them focuses on the evident presence of people who would like not to be seen, who would like to disappear, to avoid police harassment and the inquisitive gaze of the inhabitants of the area. They are ghostly presences, objects, shapes (rarely people), who appear late at night and disappear in the early morning, and whom nobody wishes to see or know. Their alienation is total and their invisibility (which Pernot tries to reverse) is absolute. There is something similar in another of his most recent series, Le feu (Fire), 2013. Nine of the pictures show the members of a gypsy family (some of whom had been photographed by the artist on another occasion) around a fire at night. Their faces, lit up by the reflection of the flames, are serious, concerned, or even somewhat distant or absent. We do not know what they are thinking about, where their mind is or in what worlds they are moving. Perhaps the other three photographs in the series, which show a caravan (which belonged to them) being destroyed by the flames of another, larger fire, give us some kind of clue. Especially if we remember the violent acts that took place in various towns in the south of France, in which all the belongings of various gypsy communities living on the outskirts of the towns were burned. Mathieu Pernot had already explored the margination and exile that gypsy people have suffered in the course of history in their own countries, and whereas people might argue, to conceal their contempt, that the Afghans come from a rather distant country, the gypsies are an integral part of European society, which should feel proud of the richness represented by its multiplicity of races, religions and customs. It is evident that there are many kinds of boundaries (social, economic and cultural). The ones that are easiest to see are those that are physically ostentatious (walls, fences, etc.). However, there are other, less showy barriers which are represented in a variety of ways,
Entre el mite i l'espant
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