Between These Folded Walls, Utopia by the artist duo Cooper & Gorfer offers a challenging narrative in portraiture, centred around femininity, migration, and imagination. American Sarah Cooper and Austrian Nina Gorfer collaborate with young refugee women to construct collective imagery from individual experiences. Portraits in this series become layered visual scenes carrying the weight of pasts, identities, traumas, and hopes.

Woven through photography, patterns, fabric, nature, and historical motifs, these multilayered works transform classical portraiture, creating a mythological and dreamlike narrative space. Instead of familiar aesthetics, viewers confront a gaze of defiance. Utopia here is not a physical place but an imaginative form existing beyond boundaries, an internal universe. Cooper & Gorfer’s creations present a powerful visual poetry oscillating between fiction and documentary, personal and collective.

Viewers encounter unfolding stories with each step. Each portrait poses a question, each detail leaves a mark: Who do we become when we carry our roots? Between These Folded Walls, Utopia provides a contemporary narrative highlighting visibility as a right and representation as a continuous battle.