Until August 11, Lagrasse Abbey presents an exhibition by Sarah Leduc entitled:
“AILLEURS ICI (ELSEWHERE HERE) – An immersion in the shelter for asylum seekers in Lagrasse”, this exhibition looks back on these people who fled war, a religious dictatorship or even patriarchal customs to find refuge in France. It is accompanied by this text:
They come from Somalia, Mali, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Turkey, Iran or from Albania. They have fled war, religious dictatorship, organized crime or patriarchal customs that subject women and little girls to the worst vexations. They left everything behind to find refuge in France where they ask for asylum.
While waiting for their fate to be sealed by the French immigration services, around fifty migrants, the majority of whom are single-parent families, are accommodated in the thirteen apartments of the shelter for asylum seekers (CADA) in Lagrasse, a village in Corbières in the Occitanie region.
The residents of the CADA live with the boredom and the slowness of everyday life. Neither at home nor arrived, they are unable to project themselves, their future depends on an administrative decision that can take years to arrive. “We don’t know when we arrive, we don’t know when we leave,” summarizes Ahmed, 15.
In the heart of the village, the CADA is a little piece of elsewhere. A territory where time expands and space shrinks, where the days are made of boredom and the nights of nostalgia. A tower of Babel where everyone hides their drama but where everyone shares the same ambiguous expectation, tinged with fear and hope.
