I Reconstruct Historical Portraits Of Monarchs With Refugees

Being known and loved for who they are is a privilege that is mostly inaccessible to refugees. The refugee identity overwrites and levels people coming from radically different backgrounds, with unique life histories, with precious dreams and aspirations, with valuable talents and, most importantly with personal meaning. Something irreplaceable is lost when all these nuances fade in one bland identity, multiplied by millions.

I fight to reclaim those core colors hidden under the reductionist term ”refugee” and to use them to hopefully repaint the future of the displaced individuals around the globe. My ambition is to cross the spacial and the time borders, all at once. So I photograph people who have uprooted themselves from their homes because of war, poverty or lack of prospects and reached countries very different than their own, under a refugee identity. I then complete their physical travel with an opportunity to travel through time, under a royal identity. Classical portraits of European political leaders are inhabited by immigrants taking on royal garments and poses to challenge the viewer to a mental drill: would anything be wrong with the pictures? Would we experience a sense of unease at the sight of an African curly haired Napoleon Bonaparte? Or were we to cringe faced with a vision a dark-skinned Drottning Kristina of Sweden? Perhaps a Roma Marie of Romania would scandalize us?

More info: repaintinghistory.com