Book release and talk: De La Lleca Al Cohue / Photography in Venezuelan Penitentiaries with Violette Bule
Book release and talk: De La Lleca Al Cohue / Photography in Venezuelan Penitentiaries with Violette Bule
Tuesday, March 12 | 7 PM
Basket Books
115 Hyde Park Blvd, Houston, TX 77006
Free and open to the public
De la Lleca al Cohue (Casa Roga, 2023) looks at Venezuelan penitentiaries as they are seen by the women and men living in them. The images reproduced in this book come from a series of photography workshops conceived by Venezuelan artist and photographer Violette Bule and carried out in various detention centers in the South American country between 2010 and 2012. That experience generated an archive of more than 3,000 photographs taken by workshop participants, who attended free of charge and voluntarily.
The book's content and design reflect Bule's dialogue with art historian Michel Otayek about the value of creative expression in extreme deprivation. Throughout the sequence of images, a handful of terms borrowed from Venezuelan prison jargon highlight the role of language in articulating senses of community and belonging among people deprived of liberty. With this publication, the editors invite readers to consider different perspectives on life under incarceration beyond the polarized positions that dominate public discourse on criminal justice.
About the guest
Violette Bule is a conceptual artist and photographer that draws on her experiences as a queer woman and Venezuelan immigrant of Lebanese descent in the United States. Her work examines how social and economic vulnerability can be used for creativity and political empowerment. Bule engages with topics including identity, memory, violence, the politics of space, and digital technologies. At the heart of her practice, Bule is interested in unpacking power dynamics shaping everyday life, emphasizing the entanglement of capitalism and structural racism in interrelated patterns of migration, nationalism, populism, and social justice.
This program is co-presented with support from Basket Books.
Learn more about the FotoFest Biennial 2024, its exhibitions, and programming at fotofest.org/fotofest-biennial-2024.
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