La Brigada

video, colour, sound, 12 min 28 sec
screen, metal structure, 24 shoe-shine boxes collected in La Paz, Bolivia, variable dimensions

Conducted in Bolivia, the project La Brigada is carried out with street shoe shiners in La Paz.

Both noticeable and nomadic in the city, they are the guardians of a 'small trade' that is precarious and despised. Often masked to avoid recognition, they try to catch the attention of passersby by tapping on small, colorful wooden boxes. Attentive and sensitive to their conditions, Bertille Bak invited them to transform their mundane gestures into "those of a brigade defending the polished shoe, powerful and respectable." She built with the collective a new form of protest, both poetic and political. This shift from reality to fiction is amplified by the presence of their personalized and colorful work tools. Bertille Bak has gathered the shoe shiners' boxes into a collection of ethnographic objects, highlighting the humanity and uniqueness of each of these invisible individuals.

Production:
-- French Embassy in Bolivia
-- La Criée Contemporary Art Center