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Virginie Rebetez

Awarded

Virginie Rebetez

'Under Cover', Serie of photography

Photography

Jury report

Under cover
The pho­to­graphic works of Vir­ginie Re­betez, who com­pleted her stud­ies at the Ger­rit Ri­etveld Acad­e­mie in Am­s­ter­dam in 2008, tackle un­con­ven­tional themes that evoke the fleet­ing­ness and ephemer­al­ity of life. Rites of tran­sience, oc­cult cer­e­monies, death, the be­yond, the hid­den and the undis­cov­ered: all fea­ture promi­nently in her oeu­vre. 
The Lau­sanne-based pho­tog­ra­pher's 2013 pro­ject ‘Under Cover', which wins this year's Swiss De­sign Award, was cre­ated while she was stay­ing in Jo­han­nes­burg. Vis­it­ing a large ceme­tery in Soweto, she no­ticed grave­stones swathed in var­i­ous ma­te­ri­als. These are part of a widely prac­tised rit­ual that takes place when the grave­stone is being laid: as soon as it is in po­si­tion, the fam­ily cover it with coloured cloths, fab­rics or plas­tic to con­ceal the iden­tity of the de­ceased. After an un­spec­i­fied pe­riod that can be any­thing from a cou­ple of weeks to years, an­other rit­ual sees the rel­a­tives un­cover the stone once again, thus en­abling the de­parted to make the sym­bolic pas­sage into the be­yond.
In her work, Vir­ginie Re­betez has cap­tured the el­e­ment of the undis­cov­ered, the con­cealed and the tran­si­tory in this South African grave rit­ual and trans­lated it into a form of artistry rem­i­nis­cent of mon­u­ments and sculp­tures. The black back­ground of the thir­teen-part se­ries brings the wrapped grave­stones to the fore, thus em­pha­sis­ing the three-di­men­sion­al­ity of the ob­jects and ren­der­ing this fleet­ing, dif­fuse rit­ual tan­gi­ble.
The­mat­i­cally and vi­su­ally, Re­betez's works in­vari­ably in­habit a twi­light zone be­tween re­portage and art pho­tog­ra­phy, the here and the be­yond, life and death.
Mar­tina Longo

Biography

Virginie Rebetez
Born in
1979
Education
Photographer

Web

www.virginierebetez.com

also in

2016

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