Asylum

Petrov Ahner, Jonas Opperskalski, Stefanie Zofia Schulz

Europe is closely tied to the issue of its borders and their accessibility to people escaping crisis-torn regions. Is this alleged freedom anything more than just a touristic appendage to the European human rights model? Sprechsaal presents three photographic positions on the lives of people who came to Europe in search of an alternative to poverty and violence.
Since 2009, Petrov Ahner has been following the so-called sans-papiers in Paris; his work addresses the tension between the anonymity of ‘illegality’ and the self-confidence and personal dignity of each individual asylum seeker. Stefanie Schulz’s striking photo report of the asylum application centre in Lebach, Germany, asks if there can be any humanity in a system in a permanent state of emergency. The work of Tel Aviv-based Jonas Opperskalski offers insights on the European asylum system from an international perspective.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of thematically-related lectures, discussions, and films.