Curatorial text

Photojournalist Ioana Moldovan authored numerous reportages between 2013 and 2016, documenting refugees’ struggle from the camps in Jordan to the borders of Eastern Europe, from a shelter in Athens to the makeshift camps in Belgrade or Macedonia. During Spring 2020,  Moldovan was planning to document the present life and integration struggles of refugees living in social housing in Affalterbach and Kirchberg an der Murr, Germany. Unfortunately, due to the corona crisis, the planned documentary research could not be completed. The artist decided instead to rent a motorhome and travel around Romania to understand how people’s daily lives are impacted by the pandemic. As she confesses, doing documentary photography without getting close to people,  listening to their stories while keeping them at a safe distance, has been a real challenge to her as a photojournalist.

The present exhibition shows selected material (both image and text) from several articles. The main exhibition room focuses mainly on coverage from the refugee crisis until 2016. Here we decided to not mention the place and the date of every picture, as these are just glimpses of the stories of nearly 5.2 million people who had reached European shores, undertaking treacherous journeys from countries torn apart by war. By contrast, the selection shown in the middle room follows Sina and seven other refugees during a day of respite outside the camp at the Greek-Turkish border. This selection is part of the most recent coverage Moldovan produced on this topic at Karagaac, Turkey, in February 2020, in the aftermath of President Erdogan’s announcement about opening the borders to the EU. 

The noticeable time gap between 2016 and 2020 is not mere chance. In 2016 a controversial deal between Turkey and European Union would ”end” the refugee crisis in Europe. In exchange for 6 billion euros, Turkey agreed to help the EU manage almost 4.1 million refugees. Nevertheless, the crisis was far from over, as millions of refugees have been stuck since then outside the borders of the EU, with new influxes coming from other conflict areas. Shortly after 2016, the refugee crisis went off the radar of the international press. However, following the killing of dozens of Turkish soldiers in northern Syria in late February 2020 and a new influx of refugees fleeing Syria's Idlib, Erdogan announced backing away from the deal. Ever since, thousands of people have attempted to reach Greece via its land or sea borders, bringing the refugee crisis back to public attention. 

The second part of the exhibition presents Moldovan’s diary notes on the COVID crisis and selected material from the documentary research she did in Romania in March and April 2020 during the lockdown. Whereas this part might seem thematically unrelated to the other two, we believe that juxtaposing them encourages reflection on the limitation of the freedom of movement, on the meaning of borders, on people’s capacity to adapt and change even when unable to plan their future, while allowing a better understanding of the artist’s style and approach. The short video material included in the exhibition will further familiarize the visitors with the photographer’s practice. 

The turbulent month of March 2020 would change everyone’s plans throughout Europe. In fact, the outburst of the pandemic and the resulting lockdown not only ruined existing plans, but threatened our ability to make plans for the indefinite future. The imagined safe border between ”Fortress Europe” and the rest of the world dissolves into thin air when facing an undiscriminating pandemic. Whereas the current situation could aggravate economic asymmetries and global inequalities, and most certainly affects certain social and economic groups more than others, it is also true that it surfaces a more general sentiment of vulnerability and uncertainty which transcends borders. While talking about human solidarity across distances might seem like a wide-eyed fantasy, it cannot be denied that the experience of global crises sets into motion reflection processes which are more oriented towards questioning and rethinking established procedures, values, and policies rather than indulging into the self-sufficiency of the status quo. 

Whereas no one can yet foresee how this might affect us in the long run, we have a time between to try to grasp the meaning of it.

Text by Daniela Duca & Alexandra Crăsnaru Dragomir