ENRIQUE RAMIREZ | PEOPLE ARE PLACES

Until February 27, 2021.

This exhibition brings together a dozen works by Enrique Ramírez on the theme of the sea as a biopolitical space inhabited by the desires, memories, grief and hope of bodies in search of a place to rest and be mourned. Born in Chile in 1979 during the Pinochet dictatorship, Ramírez evokes in many of his works the bodies of the “disappeared,” those killed by the regime and often thrown into the sea. In the absence of tombs and graves to mourn these lives cut short by terror, the sea becomes a place where their memory can be honoured. The works of Ramírez also include many references to modern-day migration policies, where the sea is a kind of limbo in which civil rights are nullified. Through texts, images and objects of great visual and poetic strength, Enrique Ramírez explores various questions on the impossibility of some bodies becoming places in which life can be fully lived.

Exhibition coproduced by Galerie de l’UQAM, the École nationale supérieure de la photographie (Arles, France) and the Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (Tourcoing, France)

Curator: Marta Gili
Artist: Enrique Ramírez