Swiss Design Awards 2025
Laurence Rasti wins in the category "Photography" with her project “Wall as Horizon”!
We are very pleased to announce that Laurence Rasti is among the winners at this year's Swiss Design Awards!
Her project Wall as Horizon addresses the issue of the over-representation of vulnerable people in the Swiss prison system. Through in-depth conversations with incarcerated people and contributions from academics, it highlights how poverty and migration are systematically criminalized, and how prison functions as a tool of exclusion.
Developed at La Promenade prison (EDPR), the project is the result of a collaborative process in which incarcerated individuals created pinhole and cyanotype images from within the prison walls. This gave them a space for self-expression and allowed them to become co-authors and experts of their own realities. At the same time, excerpts from their testimonies were engraved in concrete, confronting the silence of prison architecture with the rawness of carceral graffiti.
This work aims to provoke critical reflection on the prison system and its inherent deficiencies, challenging the societal norms and policies that criminalize poverty and migration.
The project was developed as part of the Neuchâtel Photographic Survey 2024.
“With this photographic investigation, Laurence Rasti has created a document of rare value that shows us the world of the deported and expelled in impressive impressions.”
“With this photographic investigation, Laurence Rasti has created a document of rare value that shows us the world of the deported and expelled in impressive impressions.”
Laurence Rasti was born in 1990 to Iranian parents in Switzerland. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from ECAL – University of Art and Design Lausanne in 2014 and a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from HEAD – Geneva University of Art and Design in 2019. Her projects often delve into issues surrounding identity, visibility, legitimacy, and representation. Leveraging her dual cultural background, she explores Swiss and Iranian cultural codes to examine the influence of gender roles in society, as well as the consequences of migration and the lack of respect for fundamental rights.
Wall as Horizon
Niederdorfstrasse 54
8001 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 (0)44 262 16 62
info@scheidegger-spiess.ch