L’étrangère

The exhibition "L'Érangere"* is organized within the framework of the Second Lisbon Jewelry Biennale in 2024.

It is dedicated to the phenomenon of migration, change of residence, and forced displacement, which occurs for various reasons, but is always primarily driven by politics. Whether it's leaving a country to save one's life during wartime, the inability to live under a totalitarian regime, or the desire to obtain a better education, all these are reasons existing within the context of state politics.

All of these are forms of forced migration in one way or another. Although at the official level, states are not so inclined to call them such. This makes us think even more about the role of the individual, their importance in the context of the state phenomenon.

For example, labor migration is officially considered voluntary (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, 1990). Although it's extremely difficult to agree with this.

The exhibition "L'Érangere" features jewelers who, from their own experience, know what forced migration is. Those who have themselves experienced migration at some point in their lives, perhaps in childhood, perhaps their family history is connected with this phenomenon.

The exhibition will take place in an apartment rented by its curator, Elena Karpilova, who was forced to leave Belarus in March 2022.
This is a simple apartment that Elena has rented with her husband for almost two years, which has become a new home for the curator. And for a while, it will become a home for the jewelry exhibition.

All the furniture will be in its usual places. Visitors will be able to relax, see a Portuguese apartment, and notice traditional mold in the corners of the walls, typical for this country.

Elena will prepare traditional Belarusian dishes, teas, lemonades so that visitors can feel at home. The most tired visitors will even be able to take a nap in one of the two rooms.

Welcome to a temporary home!

*The title is a quote from Albert Camus' novel "L'Étranger", published in 1942 in the midst of World War II. The added "e" at the end indicates the feminine gender in French, referring to the female gender of the exhibition curator.