It's Never Too Late to Meet Your Loved Ones: Virginie Rebetez Exhumes Her Dead at Bienne's Photoforum

Photographer Virginie Rebetez is confronting the ephemeral nature of memory and the physical erasure of the deceased in her latest work, displayed at the Photoforum in Bienne. Traditionally, cemetery plots are leveled after a concession period ends, removing headstones and disturbing the earth, effectively severing the visible link between the departed and the living.

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It is customary in our cemeteries to level the graves after a few decades, that is to say, to remove the funerary monuments and turn the earth, to a depth that leaves in peace what may still remain of the deceased further below.

Rebetez learned in 2025 that her grandparents' graves in Courrendlin, in the Jura region, were slated for this process. Unable to accept this abrupt disappearance, especially given her artistic focus on remembering the lost, she proposed to her family that they participate in the exhumation of René and Simone Rebetez's remains. This deeply personal act forms the core of her new artwork, titled "La Rencontre" (The Encounter).

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She could not reconcile herself to this abrupt disappearance, she who never ceases, in her work as a photographer, to recall the memory of the disappeared.

While exhuming remains is not uncommon, often tied to memorial services or specific cultural traditions like Madagascar's "retournement des morts" (turning of the dead), Rebetez's approach is marked by its sensitivity. Her previous work, "Vous trouverez mon corps au petit port" (You Will Find My Body at the Small Port) from 2020, delved into her family's history, specifically addressing her great-uncle's suicide. "La Rencontre" continues this exploration of familial memory, offering a poignant reflection on how we maintain connections with those who are gone.

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Finding one's dead is not exceptional.