Two Swiss exhibitions at Belfast Photo Festival
Belfast Photo Festival presents two photographic projects from Switzerland from 4 to 30 June 2026. The Belfast Photo Festival is the largest annual photography festival in the UK and Ireland. Spanning over 30 venues, it presents cutting-edge contemporary photography from local, national and international artists.
Belfast Photo Festival presents two photographic projects from Switzerland from 4 to 30 June 2026. The Belfast Photo Festival is the largest annual photography festival in the UK and Ireland. Spanning over 30 venues, it presents cutting-edge contemporary photography from local, national and international artists.
One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules, by Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli
City Hall, Belfast BT1 5GS
Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli signed their first collaboration with One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules. After meeting in Ticino and continuing a long-distance relationship, the couple decided to move in together in 2023 and began a project about their life together. During an artistic residency in Val Verzasca, Hess & Polli built an imaginary house. Alternating between symbolic representations and dramatizations of their relationship, the project plays with the standards and ideas of a relationship, establishing rules for living harmoniously.
“The exhibition was conceived as a house under construction. Visitors could physically move through it, discovering the images and - hidden within the structure - the rules, at that time 68.
The rules were not immediately visible; you had to search for them, connect them to the photographs, and build your own understanding of the relationship between text and image. The unfinished house became a metaphor for the shared space we were trying to build, the fragility and instability of something still in development, and the ongoing negotiation that defines being a couple.” Sabine Hess on One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules. Read the full interview
How Was Your Dream? by Thaddé Comar
Botanical Gardens, Belfast BT7 1LP
Thaddé Comar will present How Was Your Dream? This work highlights how the surveillance technologies used by law‑enforcement forces during the Hong Kong protests in 2019 contributed to transforming the forms of struggle and resistance adopted by demonstrators, while also leading to the gradual erasure of individual singularities.
“The word “Dream” has been widely used on different messaging platforms by Hongkongers as a substitute for the word “protest.” It’s a way for protesters to avoid incriminating themselves.
Coming back to France with all the material I created, this idea of a dream felt like a strong angle to approach the images. It carries multiple meanings and political references. In the same way as a protest, dreams are a personal experience that always involve individual senses and points of view.
So the question became the backbone of the work, and especially of the book’s structure. It’s a way for me to acknowledge that these images are a personal proposition – an expression of a subjective point of view and experience. It also introduces a kind of science fiction perception of reality, creating a space where images can behave or be presented more freely.” Thaddé Comar on How Was Your Dream. Read the full interview
These exhibitions are supported by the Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia and by the Swiss Cultural Fund UK.