SATTELITE SHOW OF THE TRIENNALE DER PHOTOGRAPHIE HAMBURG
Admiralitätstraße 71
D-20459 Hamburg
Sa 2 – 4pm and by appointment
Ulla Deventer‘s multimedia exhibition at gallery MELIKE BILIR is the first solo show of “Butterflies Are a Sign of a Good Thing”, her recent artistic research about young women who work in prostitution in Accra, the capital of Ghana. The artist befriended a number of female sex workers and spent a lot of time with them. As part of a highly stigmatised peer group, they are dealing with prejudices and social exclusion, in addition to coping with the daily hardships of a poor existence. Ulla Deventer’s empathic interpersonal relationships with her subjects, based on trust and respect, are instrumental. Apart from her photographs, this new body of work includes drawings and objects, realised in collaboration with the women. Thus, a multitude of narratives emerges that express the sex workers’ own perspective on their lives, their feelings and their bodies; and articulate their struggles and their hopes. By constructing these life stories in such a nuanced manner, Deventer achieves to step over the existing barrier of preconceived ideas of this subject, and ultimately counters the stigma. Already in her series “I‘ve Never Been Big Sick”, initiated in 2013, Ulla Deventer focused on the personal stories of female sex workers in several European capitals. After regularly encountering women with West-African roots over the years, she eventually decided to travel to Ghana to further explore the subject. Holding a Master of Fine Arts, Ulla Deventer is currently researcher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Her work was shown internationally and won several awards. Recently it was selected for the „Ones to Watch 2018“ of the British Journal of Photography. by Tom Nys