Sébastien Cuvelier ‘Gypsy Queens’ — exhibition
Vernissage 16th January at 6 pm.
Admission is free and you are welcome to attend.
Jean-Manuel Simoes ‘Chiens de la casse’ — exhibition Born in 1964 in the suburbs of Paris and raised in a French-Portuguese culture, Jean-Manuel Simoes began his career as a photographer at the age of...
Photographer and globetrotter, Sébastien Cuvelier was born in 1975 and lives and works in Luxembourg. He made his first visit to Romania in 2011: The first time entering Buzescu behind the wheel of a rented Dacia is a moment that you know you will never forget. Seeing those houses from another world, the windshield is being transformed into a movie screen projecting a random mix of images, from Walt Disney fairy-tales to MTV Cribs episodes of newly rich rappers. This vision has become a ritual. Every time I returned to this village (five times in total), I allowed myself a little amusement ride. Once back and forth on the main road, eyes wide open.
This was the beginning of his photographic project Gypsy Queens. Accompanied by his friend and translator Andreea, Sébastien Cuvelier has on multiple occasions crossed Romania by road. A journey of more than 6000 kilometers led him to the four corners of the country: Ciurea in the north-east, Ivesti and Liesti at the east, Strehaia in the west, Buzescu in the south. Animated by the wish to surpass the fronts of those palaces of inhuman dimensions and to engage in a real relationship with its inhabitants, Sébastien Cuvelier discovers the unforeseen universe of women left alone by their husbands away on business trips. These wondrous communities of rich Roma are defined by their own codes, combining in an excessive manner social success and ostentatiousness.
Thus the photographs show us views of these unusual architectures but also and foremost the women and young girls growing up and interacting with each other in these environments of half empty palaces serving more as shiny showcases then as living spaces. Those last ones are often reduced to one or two rooms in the back of the house.
HUSSON
