Tudor Rhys Etchells (b.1994 Cardiff, Wales)
is a documentary artist who uses the fiction of the photograph to challenge legally created realities.
Working within such a bureaucracy in his previous role as a human rights lawyer inspires his closeness to the document and brutally mundane. To him, the photograph and the law are both frameworks for negotiating evidence, belief and knowledge.
The performative element of these systems is best acted on the stage photography provides. By breaking the fourth wall, legal and photographic portrayals of truth can be subverted.
Documentary is a medium that often fails, so satirising its relationship to border regimes, the norm of the imagined nation state is questioned.
tudoretchells@gmail.com
instagram
A Reasonable Degree of Likelihood
Available Potential Guaranteed
CV
SELECTED WORKS
SELECTED WORKS
1. Pacta Sunt Servanda
Latvia is being sued for millions in private courts (Latin: in camera) because of protests against foreign-owned wind farms. An insider presents a mock trial that attempts to reclaim sovereignty. In this theatre of law, the photograph’s claim to land is acted out.
2. Available Potential Guaranteed
Citizenship can be legally bought. Simply pretend to be an investor and purchase a golden passport. The commodification of institutionalised mobility is caught in the ethics of image making.
3. A Reasonable Degree of Likelihood
Working as lawyer representing asylum seekers the absurd legal systems disrupts the documentary itself.
4. Seeking the Mundane
A collaborative project with a small number of asylum-seekers where we responded to each other’s images taken during lockdown. The final works aim to show how the domestic can become an act of resistance for those who are forced to make South Wales their home. In this respect, the project offers a counter image to the prevailing imagery of asylum-seekers and searches for a nuance in the commonality of routine.