216-AN-Bethléem-Check-point_2007 (Large).eventnodeType: Event
Location: State Art Gallery
City: Hyderabad
Date: Fri, 2011/12/02 – 7:00pm
Price: All are welcome
The Alliance Française of Hyderabad presents
« WALLS BETWEEN PEOPLE »
by Alexandra Novosseloff and Frank Neisse
Exhibition of photographs
On view from 2nd Dec till 11th Dec
at State Art Gallery
All are Welcome – Opening on Fri, 2nd Dec, 7pm
followed by the screning of documentary film “The Wall of Shame”

 

After a two-year journey around the world, from Tijuana to Belfast and from Jerusalem to Seoul and Laayoune, Alexandra Novosseloff and Frank Neisse met people living by those walls to better understand their lives. The authors came back from these travels with stories, anecdotes and observations.

Exhibitions were held since 2008, the first of them being held in Geneva at the International Red Cross Museum and in the Armenian Heritage Center in Valence. Several other exhibitions have since then been organized in French cultural centers (Berlin, Sofia, Mexico, Amman, Tijuana, Mainz, Niamey, Vienna, Innsbruck) or foreign universities (Liege, Bogota, Pereira, Panama) in 2009 and 2010.

This exhibition brings to you, an original and an unusual photographical report on six different walls and situations, current scars of our open and globalized world:

–       The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea
–       The Green Line that divides the island of Cyprus
–       The Peace Lines in Northern Ireland
–       The Barrier built between the United States and Mexico
–       The Electrified Fence along the Control Line between Pakistan and India
–       The Separation Wall between Israelis and Palestinians.

These walls are tangible signs of permanent tensions in our globalized world.

Between protection and separation
In the short term, a wall fulfils the functions of protection and safeguarding. But alone it cannot guarantee effective protection. It must itself be guarded. In fact, it protects less than it separates. Beyond security and protection, the objective is separation from one’s neighbor.
Between resignation and circumvention
The wall is first perceived as an insurmountable obstacle. Over time, ways to get round it are devised. The appeal of the other, the dream of another world and of somewhere else better, often override the dangers of crossing the barrier.

This exhibition also encourages a reflection centered on walls that separate people, both physically and mentally. It questions the idea of the Other as ‘unknown’, ‘misunderstood’, ‘dangerous’, the idea that incites people to build walls so as to distance themselves, to reject the other in such a way that they no longer have to see them. The photographs help the visitors discover areas of crisis and deep ideological antagonisms that are amongst the most complex in the world, all of them exhibited for the first time in a single space.

Through the resurgence, or the permanence, of putting up walls, the exhibition not only highlights the ambiguity of globalization, based on the notion of free trade, but also reflects new security challenges: countering asymmetric, cross-border and extra-territorial threats, such as terrorism, illegal immigration and networks linked to organized crime. Through the testimonies of people confronted daily with the reality of walls, the exhibition also reveals the impact that they have on a human level.

 

 

 

FILM – THE WALL OF SHAME

a documentary by Thierry Denis & Guy Ratovondrahona, 58 min
subtitled in English

 

The fail of the Berlin Wall gave us hope for the end of divisions.
However, 20 years later, many walls, be it of concrete, metal or wire, have been erected thoughout the world. In the U.S.A., in Israel, in Europe, and in many other parts of the world.
The aim of these new walls is not to prevent people from going out, like in Berlin, but to prevent them from coming in.
In our so-called global world, these walls are for us the evidence of a global crisis.
In Mexico, in Israel, in Berlin, we met those who live near these walls, either their victims or their promoters.
Everywhere we realized the same thing, these walls violently incarnate the difficulty to communicate with each other.