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Trapped in Limbo
Trapped in Limbo
Felipe Romero Beltrán
March 31, 2025
The showcase comprises excerpts from the photo series Dialect (2020-2023), complemented by the three-channel video installation Recital (2020). In his long-term multimedia projects, the artist – who was born in Bogotá and now lives in Paris – explores the lives of migrants, and shines a light on the limitations they encounter, both in terms of language and bureaucracy. Through the juxtaposition of Beltrán’s still-photo and video work, the exhibition culminates in an ambiguous yet powerful story about waiting, companionship and inertia, told through a seamless combination of documentary and staged approaches.
For more than three years, Beltrán accompanied a group of minors from Morocco who, following their undocumented entry into Spain, were placed in a temporary holding facility to await their legal immigration status. This process can take up to three years, at which point they would have reached legal adulthood. Trapped in limbo, they pass the time with sports, maintaining their physical appearance, and making conversation.
Beltrán’s photographs are infused with empathy, yet also reveal his distinctive artistic style. With his precise compositions, he poses questions about identity, power dynamics and social structures, while at the same time creating a completely new visual language that resists any clear-cut stylistic categorisation. Beltrán’s images have a dual impact, rooted both in their narrative power and, above all, in their visual potency.
You might also like to view Felipe Romero Beltrán’s project Nomen Nescio, featured in LFI 4.2020.
Katrin UllmannFor more than three years, Beltrán accompanied a group of minors from Morocco who, following their undocumented entry into Spain, were placed in a temporary holding facility to await their legal immigration status. This process can take up to three years, at which point they would have reached legal adulthood. Trapped in limbo, they pass the time with sports, maintaining their physical appearance, and making conversation.
Beltrán’s photographs are infused with empathy, yet also reveal his distinctive artistic style. With his precise compositions, he poses questions about identity, power dynamics and social structures, while at the same time creating a completely new visual language that resists any clear-cut stylistic categorisation. Beltrán’s images have a dual impact, rooted both in their narrative power and, above all, in their visual potency.
You might also like to view Felipe Romero Beltrán’s project Nomen Nescio, featured in LFI 4.2020.
© Courtesy of the artist and HATCH
LFI 4.2020+-
Felipe Romero Beltrán: Nomen Nescio. The terrible heritage of civil war – an elegiac series about life on the Colombian Río Magdalena also called the ‘river of death’ More
Felipe Romero Beltrán+-
Born in Bogotá in 1992, Beltrán now lives in Madrid and works as a documentary photographer. He has lived in Colombia, Argentina, Israel and Palestine and specialises in social, political and interpersonal themes, for which he hopes to offer new narrative perspectives. He is currently working on a Phd program on documentary photography at the University of Madrid. More
