The Mirror

This project explores the notions of home, identity and exile: a questioning linked to the consequences of fleeing from home, the instantaneous in what is only transitory, a moment of immobility in the movement of these lives that have uprooted themselves to go towards the unknown.

Nestled in the heart of Brussels, Belgium, this social housing is a place that brings together four young people put on their own and five asylum seekers in Belgium under one roof.

This place, created in 2014, is composed of transit accommodation where each inhabitant benefits from a beautiful private space. It is managed by two non-profit organisations: the CEMO (Centre d'Education en Milieu Ouvert) which provides follow-up for young people and Convivial, which is a non-profit organisation for the integration of refugees.

My intention is to highlight these marginalised and vulnerable people.

Young people looking to build a home, a new Self, and refugees who are looking for a better future and horizon.

They are all in transition, in an in-between place where the walls of their flat act as mirrors that allow them to refllect on their own journey, their evolution, their losses, their hopes, their identities.

In these spaces they are sheltered from a tumultuous and often dangerous past and present. They can be themselves, with no other witnesses than those they have chosen.

This housing offers a bubble of intimacy, where windows are wide open for them to dream. A place for new experiences of solitude and self-reflection. Their thoughts and feelings within this dwelling are transcribed in manuscripts. It is important to give them a voice, with their words, their handwriting.

To discover the paths of intimacy, wandering, exile, where family and a future, and/or a troubled past intersect.

This series is an opportunity to question the definition of a home. How do we create and reconstruct this intimate, mental and physical space of freedom and well-being?

It is also an opportunity to build bridges between these people and society, especially the inhabitants of Brussels.

Thanks to this project I was able to discover these testimonies of survival, questioning, forced forgetfulness and violence, both psychological and physical, but also of joy, relief and hope.

Their lives are extremely fragile, unpredictable and transitory. Sometimes too moving, but so human.

The mirror reflects this reality and is intended to be a significant vehicle for fostering social cohesion and dispelling the stereotypes that stigmatize these vulnerable populations.

Photography is my tool to understand their experiences and to bring them some visibility.

This work is not a narrative, but rather a dialogue where the essential is played out in the unspoken, in silences, gestures, memories and dreams. It is also an invitation to reflect on the social policies of housing, education, employment and health.

“In the mirror, I see myself where I am not, in an unreal space that opens virtually behind the surface; I am there, where I am not, a sort of shadow which gives me my own visibility, which allows me to look at myself where I am absent: utopia of the mirror."

Michel Foucault

Other spaces (1967)

Heterotopias