CESAR DEZFULI

BANJUL TO BIELLA

It was 6:40 in the morning when the crew aboard the rescue vessel Iuventa sighted the rubber boat. Aboard were 129 people from Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Guinea, and Nigeria, among other countries. They had departed six hours prior from the coast of Libya.

Among them was Malick Jeng, 19-year-old Gambian whose life in Italy I documented from 2016 till 2018. He is one of the 181,436 refugees and migrants who reached Italy by sea in 2016, a year that broke all records in Mediterranean crossings. Malick left his hometown of Banjul, the capital of Gambia, five months before the rescue. He walked away alone, without telling his family, like many young people who have attempted the journey to Europe before him.

Malick Jeng, from Gambia, at the moment of being rescued from the Mediterranean Sea on August 2nd 2016.

After passing Senegal, he crossed the desert in Mali inside an oil tank, where he nearly suffocated. Once he arrived in Libya, he was imprisoned for a month, during which he had to witness the murder of some of his fellow travelers. As soon as he was released, thanks to a payment sent by his family, he got in touch with a smuggler that transferred him to a "connection center" in Tripoli, Libya´s capital. He waited there for weeks to be sent to a beach in Zabratha, from where he departed to Europe.

Once in Italy, he was first transferred to Sicily and then to Biella, a city in the north of the country, where he lived till 2022, in a place called Hotel Colibri - an old hotel closed for a decade. The hotel was turned into a refugee center in August 2016.

22 March 2017. Spring begins in Biella, leaving behind the first winter of Malick's life.

The days at the Colibri Hotel go by slowly, and its guests are plunged into an endless monotony. "Do they rescue us from the sea and then keep us stuck here doing nothing for months?" asks Malick, as he lies on his bed, where he spends most of the day. "Get up, eat, sleep, get up, eat, sleep..." he repeats insistently as if he had gone into a mental loop. Between 2016 and 2018, I documented his life and that of the other people living in this centre, in order to show the reality of reception centres in Italy and life after the rescues in the Mediterranean.

Although his asylum application was rejected, Malick has managed to regularise his situation and obtain a work permit. And in 2022 he left the Hotel Colibri to begin living on his own.

EXHIBITIONS

2022. Fotogalería Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo. CDF. Montevideo, Uruguay.
2022. Kolga Tbilisi Photo. Outdoor. Tbilisi, Georgia.
2022. 25th Anniversary of the Luis Valtueña International Photography Award. Cervantes Institute. Dakar, Senegal.
2022. 25th Anniversary of the Luis Valtueña International Photography Award. Outdoor. Madrid, Spain.
2022. 25th Anniversary of the Luis Valtueña International Photography Award. Outdoor. Navia, Spain.
2022. 25th Anniversary of the Luis Valtueña International Photography Award. Outdoor. Avilés, Spain.
2020. Luis Valtueña Awards. Biblioteca Jordi Rubió i Balaguer, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain.
2019. Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. MI, EE.UU.
2019. Luis Valtueña Awards. Archivo Histórico Provincial de Albacete.
2019. Luis Valtueña Awards. Centro Joaquín Roncal. Zaragoza.
2019. Luis Valtueña Awards. Caixa Forum. Madrid.
2018. OBERÜBER KARGER Kommunikationsagentur. Dresden, Alemania.
2017. Paraty em Foco. Paraty, Brasil.
2017. Comune di Vercelli. Vercelli, Italia.
2017. Palazzo Ferrero. Biella, Italia.

PUBLICATIONS

The Guardian (UK)

El Pais (Spain)

Diari ARA (Spain)

Aljazeera English (Qatar)

Fluter Magazine (Germany)

Roads and Kingdoms (USA)

Open Migration (Italy)

Lacuna Magazine (UK)

Scenes Journal (UK)

CÉSAR DEZFULI

BANJUL TO BIELLA

CESAR DEZFULI

JOURNALIST AND DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER