Center for Contemporary Arts CSU

Artist Alice Myers expresses herself primarily through photography and text. Her work is concerned with the antagonisms that occur in the field of documentary photography and the role of the photographer within specific social contexts. It deals with the question of how to think about social inequality through photography. In order to articulate this question, she works closely with various social groups over longer periods of time.
At the Celje Likovni salon Gallery she presents a project bearing a title borrowed from an Arabic proverb: Nothing is Impossible under the Sun.
The work deals with the issue of migration and was produced in the port of Calais, which is located in France and is one of the main crossing points to Great Britain. As such, it signifies a space of passing and multiple encounters, whereas for the immigrants it is predominantly a place of constant waiting. The artist spent almost two years collecting material which presents, without creating positions, the state of entrapment experienced by a diverse range of people who are brought together by their situation. Often they have no legal status and they constantly face the threat of prosecution. Refugees are often represented as either victims or criminals. Through a process of negotiation and by bringing together diverse materials, Myers shapes a more complex picture. An essential feature of the project is temporality, as it is precisely the time span that contributes to the personal dimension of the work.

The exhibition presents negotiated portraits, images of personal objects, drawings, handwriting, and the port shrouded in fog, with silhouettes visible in the distance. Some of the photographs were taken with mobile phones by the immigrants themselves. These reveal the personal lives of those waiting in the port and the past reality that is becoming memory on European soil. The text takes the form of a wall banner that reveals shocking, intimate stories of their lives. The artist was also interested in the dreams that the refugees were having and fragments of the descriptions of their dreams are also included in the text. The installation challenges the dominant ways of representing refugees with a poetic experience that moves away from labelling the presented subjects through the perspective of others. The project highlights the importance of equality and draws attention to the repressive policies of the European Union.