Ann essay of images and texts bringing together the work and researches of four artists: Krasimira Butseva (Bulgaria - United Kingdom), Guillaume Chauvin (France), Ziad Naitaddi (Morocco) et Sofia Yala Rodrigues (Portugal - Angola - Royaume Uni).

This book is a broad fresco made up of singular adventures and lives, from the October Revolution to the fall of the USSR and decolonisation. By re-drawing geographical boundaries outside the official narratives of the four areas of migration, the artists have tried to examine education, propaganda and racism in the political contexts of successive migrations, leading to the postsocialist and postcolonialist movements. The colonial symbolism which haunts the world today is revealed for what it is in our readings of the real and the virtual.

Decolonisation is not simply a disruptive event taking place over a particular measurable period of time; it is more a process. One of the strong points of postcolonial research is its ability to consider the colonial past from both colonised and colonisers, combining historical and contemporary perspectives.


“Thousands of skilled workers, engineers from all of Europe and America were engaged for the construction and implementation of industrial plans. These professionals trained and educated subsequently a whole generation of Soviet citizens.
The government in place offered a significant number of contracts to African-Americans, African-Caribbeans,
and to Jamaicans based in the United States, where Jim Crow laws were still in place, inflicting racial segregation,discrimination and violence. »
Krasimira Butseva

“ Individual destinies emerge from working-class back-grounds; a collective understanding of migration and an awareness of others become possible. These photographs show how the imagination uses successive layers of identity, constant movement, and all the searches which they inspire.”
Sofia Yala Rodrigues

“In the end only a few words and pictures remain from an epic tale which has been reshaped by the main news event and by other lesser matters.”
Guillaume Chauvin

“ Condemning racism, receiving awards, being valued in a society where one is also a victim, being rejected by one’s country of origin; these contrasts epitomize for me the unending, torturous search for emotional equilibrium, always in-between.”
Ziad Naitaddi