I couldn't believe that anybody could have the same story as me

No podía creer que alguien tuviera la misma historia que yo

The project "I couldn't believe that anybody could have the same story as me" took place in two stages. The first was a camouflaged intervention in the Basque newspaper Gara.

We printed a fictional adaptation of the life's story of Camilla, a Danish woman who looks Asian because she was originally adopted from South Korea, together with snapshots from her family album.

We treated her story as an allegory for the tensions between collective and individual identity, set against a backdrop of cultural conflicts. The story was printed at a time when the newspaper was under threat of being closed down due to its alleged ties with the terrorist movement ETA.

Copying the layout from the other pages, we adapted our material to mimic the style and design of the regular newspaper pages. When the newspaper went to print, we sent two photographers to document the process from the moment it left the editorial offices, to the printing press, and finally the newspaper kiosks.

Returning to Iratxe’s roots in Markina, Basque Country, the material was presented in the first exhibition of Uhagon, a disused police station that was turned into the town’s new cultural center. The installation juxtaposes the highly personal imagery of Camilla’s family life with the rational mechanism of the printing press that multiplied her story for mass consumption.