SUPER DEMOCRACY - The Senate of Things

Three cultural institutions enter into a dialogue with the Belgian Senate during the exhibition SUPERDEMOCRACY, which is on display throughout October. BPS22 in Charleroi, BOZAR in Brussels and M HKA in Antwerp provide a cultural dimension to the Senate’s current issues.

1.10.2017 - 31.10.2017

Véronique Vercheval

(c)image: BPS22, Charleroi
Usine occupée. 46 portraits de travailleurs de Royal Boch, 2009
Photography

Restrained in their composition, the photographs of Usine occupée move us in the same way, by their simplicity and their authenticity. When the Royal Boch company was about to condemn 47 workers to unemployment or early retirement, Véronique Vercheval visited the plant as a militant and solidary neighbour. She spent tens of hours to visit, listen, sympathize and take pictures. It is with great discretion that she photographed these workers asking them to evoke their first day in the company and the feelings that are related to it. The testimonies collected, associated with the photographs, are slices of life spent in this community, an emblematic manufacture of La Louvière, once prosperous and now caught up by globalisation.