POSSIBLE WORLDS

The World Economic Forum website spoke of the pandemic as the “greatest psychological experiment” of all time. Historian Yuval Noah Harari went further, describing it as a huge, albeit entirely involuntary, “social experiment”. The rapidity and spread of the pandemic forced everyone to face their own individual fragility; also, its impact on a global scale made it necessary to rethink, radically, the hierarchies of values ​​and behavioural structures that seemed consolidated.

Which role photography can play in the narration of this new world? Can photography make a vision, an idea, a possibility, accessible? Can photography open our gaze to other worlds? Bourriaud stated that the contemporary artist is a “semionaute” who “invents trajectories between signs”, giving life to narratives that entertain the prevailing character of negotiation with reality. A lot of photography, sometimes even what we are used to pigeonholing as “documentary”, provides us with useful tools to deepen, and where necessary subvert, the conventional narration of the world.

Joana Choumali – The threads of hope

The Ivorian photographer has tried not only to tell the wounds of her country but also to mend them, metaphorically, through a meticulous and careful embroidery work on the photos she has taken and then printed on canvas. “Ça va aller” is the project that won her the eight edition of the prestigious Prix Pictet.