Rif Spahni (Mallorca, 1972) carried out this work in the Saharawi refugee camps of Tindouf, in the southeast of Algeria, during the years 2005 to 2007.

What do all exiles have in common, beginning with the very first, that of Ulysses, who took twenty years to return to his island after the war of Troy? Perhaps a feeling of unreality. As attached as we are to certain landmarks, voices, dreams, we suddenly find ourselves far away from them, and have to learn to look anew, and to listen. Rif Spahni's photos illustrate that unreality with the appearance of hallucination in the Saharawi refugee camps of Tindouf, in the southeast of Algeria. There, a provisional place that has become home to several generations, time has stood still. Nothing seems to advance, nothing seems capable of becoming concrete.

It is an illusion, the same as that experienced by all those who at some point had to leave their land because it was occupied or governed by others. The desert is the same, but here they have had to learn the name of each oasis, mound and well.