'Unsettled' is a long term project on change. The series focuses on the worldwide phenomenon of industrial expansions and its consequences in the study of the Belgian village Doel and the surrounding polder area. The place is threatened by vast harbor expansions of the port of Antwerp and related nature compensation plans, imposed by the European Union.
Starting from this local example the project refers to an international tendency of global political and economic shifts and the way they manifest themselves to the people and their surroundings.
The series questions notions as financial power, nature, (the link between) identity and place and migration.
Unsettled was awarded, published and exhibited (inter)nationally sine 2008, received a project grant from the Dutch Anna Cornelis foundation, Dutch embassy in London and Dublin, is supported by PICTURAE and I received a travel grant for a show in Moma Tbilisi of the work from The Flemish Government.
I am continuing the series and prepare a book publication.
I am continuing the series and prepare a book publication.
“Unsettled has a multiplicity of meanings, but at the core is change. To be Unsettled is to be in a state of change. […] Rarely are people or organizations compelled to incur change for reasons without financial gain. And even more rarely are the results of such changes actually analysed for the appropriateness of policy or actual gain.”
— Harris Fogel, Associate Professor and curator
“With her series Unsettled, Isabelle Pateer does more than just witness: she proposes a metaphor of the ambiguity between progress and disenchantment.”
— François Delvoye, curator Botanique Brussels
“Pateer has created thoughtful imagery combining talent with a social purpose which effortlessly balances the narrative of the universal and the individual and how international capitalism touches on or even dominates people’s lives. The underlying truth here is about how global corporations wield their power. This is not to say that the photos don’t have visual appeal also, with their startling, sharply observed detail and pale Vermeer light. These are pictures of uncomfortable truths, eloquently spoken.”
— Riikka Kuittinen, journalist
“Isabelle Pateer’s landscapes are like theatre sets – in their detail and construction they form backgrounds to stories. These become apparent when she inhabits her images with characters. Earth and concrete have never looked as hard as they do next to her young and vulnerable human relics, left behind by the roar and rumble of industrial expansion.”
— Roísín Agnew, journalist
‘Unsettled’ is photographed with Mamiya 7 on medium film format on Fuji Provia 400 ASA.
The images are presented as framed digital C-Prints and exist in two editions: 40 x 50 cm and 80 x 100 cm. Each 10 copies.