Leading on from our Open Forum events during Brighton Photo Biennial 2018, we asked artist Nana Varveropoulou back to kick off our Instagram photochats. As part of our issue #1 Europe, photochats are conversations through images. Featuring Nana Varveropoulou and System of Systems (Danae Io, Rebecca Glyn-Blanco and Maria McLintock).
Nana Varveropoulou is a photographer, artist and senior lecturer in photography at Kingston School of Art (University of Kingston). Nana’s work explores issues of human rights, migration and identity through the investigation of personal spaces and individual experiences, often through the process of collaboration. Nana also works as an editorial photographer for various UK and European publications and as an artist/facilitator, supporting various communities and under-privileged groups in the UK in the process of developing community led art projects responding to key issues affecting them, through the production of artwork and creative interventions.
Nana Varveropoulou’s series No Man’s Land is a collaborative project that explores experiences of indefinite immigration detention. There are currently approximately 2500 people detained under immigration law in the UK. Under this law, a person can be detained indefinitely. The reasons for detaining someone for a longer period of time vary – from a failed asylum application to a minor criminal offence – but the result in most cases is a person stuck in a state of limbo.
Not accepted by the UK and usually not recognised by their country of origin, a person detained can neither leave Britain nor be released, gradually becoming invisible and stateless.
System of Systems is a research project that uses the format of exhibitions, publications and discursive environments to address the use of technology and bureaucracy in the asylum seeking process in Europe. Founded by Rebecca Glyn-Blanco, Maria McLintock and Danae Io in 2016, SoS collaborates with artists, architects, designers, policy-makers and researchers to wade through, what is with no uncertainty, a complex and knotty process. The project is in solidarity with upholding the rights of asylum-seekers, as well as collaborating with practitioners to elucidate the complexity of the system for those who have a stake in it. SoS has thus far involved an exhibition held at Grace, Athens in 2017, the publication of a book and a series of workshops and events across Europe. systemofsystems.info
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For more of Nana’s work, visit her website here.
For more from System of Systems, visit their website here.
