Ajouter un Tiret by Virginie Rebetez at Photoforum Pasquart

Virginie Rebetez has spent over twenty years asking what photography can and cannot show of death.

Overview

Ajouter un Tiret premieres her latest work La Rencontre: a piece that begins with an administrative fact, the non-renewal of a burial concession, and becomes one of the most personal works of her practice.

When Rebetez learned that her grandparents' graves were to be levelled, she decided to carry out an exhumation herself. Not as an observer, but as a participant: physically present in the pit, working with her hands, accompanied by her family. Every stage was documented through film, sound and photography.

A second room traces the arc of her practice, including Vous trouverez mon corps au petit port and L'Inconnue, her long-term commitment to organising the funeral of an unidentified woman found in Geneva's River Arve in 2014, a case that remains open.

Rebetez approaches death with attention and care. Her images ask what it means to bear witness to someone who can no longer speak. It is an ethical impulse, a refusal to look away, that runs through the entire exhibition.

About The Artist

Virginie Rebetez (1979, CH) is a photographer and artist based in Lausanne. After studies at the École de Photographie de Vevey and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, she developed a practice centred on disappearance, memory, and the spaces that absence creates. Working across photography, video, sound, and installation, she assembles archival materials, personal objects, official documents, and her own images into narratives that bring the dead, the missing, and the forgotten into the present. Her work has been described as work that "makes the dead speak."

Rebetez's work has been shown at Photoforum in 2012 as part of a group show called The Breath on our Back, in 2013 as part of Prix Photoforum, and again in 2014 alongside Steeve Juncker and Reiner Riedler. She has exhibited widely in Switzerland and internationally, including at Photo Elysée Lausanne, MACVAL Paris, the Centre de la Photographie Genève, Rencontres d'Arles, and photoSCHWEIZ. She was a nominee for the Prix Elysée 2022/24 and has received support from Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, the Canton of Vaud, and the Fondation Leenaards. Her work is held in the collections of the FCAC, Fotostiftung Schweiz, and the City of Lausanne.

The exhibition is part of the annual programme handle with care and is presented alongside the work of Tiziana Amico.