Housemaids and their parallel worlds: ‘Personal insights into the lives of female migrant workers’.
Photography exhibition ‘Apples for Sale’ and screening of the documentary ‘Together Apart’
Venue:
Technopolis 20 Cultural Centre
18 Nikolaou Nikolaidi Avenue
Pafos 8010, Cyprus
Phone: 7000 2420
Website: www.technopolis20.com
Free Entrance
Opening: Saturday, 3rd of November 2018, 18:00
Documentary Screening: Saturday, 3rd of November 2018, 18:30 (57 min)
A reception will follow.
Duration of the exhibition: 3 - 16 November 2018
Opening hours: Monday - Friday, 10:00 - 15:00 & Saturday, 10:00 - 13:00
The Goethe-Institut Cyprus, in collaboration with Technopolis 20 in Pafos, within the framework of “Weeks of the German Language” 2018, presents the project ‘Housemaids and their parallel worlds’, a reflection on the lives of female migrant labourers who work and live as household help. How do they manage to fulfil their desire for meaning, affirmation and individuality? How can they have a successful new beginning in their home country following a forced departure?
Within the framework of this project, the photography exhibition Apples for Sale, by the German photographer Rebecca Sampson will take place, who will also open the exhibition at Technopolis 20, on Saturday, 3rd of November 2018 at 18:00. After the opening, at 18:00 the documentary film Together Apart, will be screened, by the German anthropologist and filmmaker Maren Wickwire, as a joint art project. A reception will follow. The exhibition will continue until Friday, 16th of November 2018.
The exhibition Apple for Sale and the documentary film Together Apart, help us see beyond our island and give a glance at a nuanced picture of life with all pros and cons and parallel worlds that play an important role in the search for self-determination and living a meaningful life.
More specifically, the photography collection Apples for Sale, touches the issue of Indonesian maids living and working in Hong Kong. The women in the photographs are seen as second-class migrants in a parallel female subculture. Its focus lies on the contrast between the uniform everyday constraints they experience in the households of their employers and the young women’s desire to lead a meaningful existence and explore their own individuality. The result is an extensive body of work; a multimedia installation involving Rebecca Sampson’s own photographs and narratives, pictures and texts of third parties, web videos and programmed mobile phones and the distillation of the entire experience into a book, providing the audience with 360 degrees of entry point into this peculiar world. The extensive research for the project Apples for Sale was funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung in cooperation with the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and within the context of the program Grenzganger China – Deutschland.
Together Apart is an intimate family portrait of two Igorot women, a mother and a daughter, who left the Philippines to seek work abroad. They end up in Cyprus even though it offers one of the lowest wages for migrant domestic helpers. The two women are Guil Ann, a 25-year-old who follows her mother, Carren, to the other side of the world for employment. Months after mother and daughter reunite in Cyprus, unexpected events lead to Carren’s forced departure. This happens after Carren has been living in Cyprus for almost two decades, and now she has to adjust to a new beginning in the Philippines. The film contemplates notions of self-hood, belonging and care, shifting between serial migrants' transitory present and projections onto the future. (trailer: https://vimeo.com/242478823)
A few words about the artists:
Rebecca Sampson is a German-American photographer living in Berlin. Her passion is for reportage and social commentary. Her work has tackled a wealth of socially and personally sensitive topics - from Berlin's African drug dealer community, through the quirks and gun-obsession of her Minnesota family to the treatment of eating disorders, for which she developed an innovative photographic therapy methodology. This last project won Rebecca the "gute aussichten - junge deutsche fotografie” award. Rebecca holds scholarships from the Foam Museum Amsterdam, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB). Her work has been exhibited at the Museum “Deichtorhallen / Haus der Photographie” in Hamburg, at the “Willy Brandt Haus” Berlin and internationally in America, India, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria and Cyprus.
Maren Wickwire, who is based in Cyprus and the USA, is the director of award winning films. She has a MA in Visual Media Anthropology from Freie Universitat Berlin and a Diploma in Communication Design from the Folkwang University of the Arts. Her multivocal installations have been toured globally. In her practice-led research she focuses on labour migration, women’s issues, refugee communities in the USA and Europe as well as peacemaking and post-conflict resolutions.
From Saturday, November 03, 2018
To Friday, November 16, 2018
