Emoplux

In a society overwhelmed by often questionable visual information, the selection of works in this exhibition follows an approach of artistic research and social engagement. In response to “fake news” and the risks associated with the use of AI in image creation, some photographers are developing new strategies for presenting and circulating images—either by resisting technology or by repurposing and deconstructing it.

Through his photographs and installations, Luxembourgish artist Yann Annicchiarico explores worlds that seem visually inaccessible. By “photographing” with a scanner placed on the ground, he makes the nocturnal world of insects visible, bringing to light fleeting and marginal lives that exist outside of human centralism.

In a different approach, Belgian artist Lucas Leffler’s multimedia work often revolves around the ontology of the image. A visual artist and photographer, he revisits the history and techniques of photography while questioning the industrial legacy of major photographic equipment manufacturers such as Agfa and Kodak.

Through his appropriation and transformation of archival photographs, Paulo Simão raises questions of absence/presence and visible/invisible in a historical and political context with his series Erased. Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning Drawing, he reinterprets images from the archives of the U.S. Library of Congress depicting monuments of historically significant figures, some of whom are now subjects of controversy.

Erasure takes on a more destructive dimension in Embers of Narratives (سرديات الجمر), a series by German-Iraqi artist Raisan Hameed, who explores different forms of destruction in an abstract manner, following a cycle initiated by Risse and ZerStörung. Using Google Street View images of his hometown, Mosul, he creates shapes with a thermographic tool that evokes traces of flames, recalling the war-torn landscapes of his childhood.

Narrative, accompanied by visual poetry, is a recurring element in the conceptual artistic practice of Luxembourgish-Portuguese artist Marco Godinho. In some of his works, he employs lenticular photography to create a multidimensional space where the viewer, depending on their position, generates new images and activates new temporalities of photography.