Diverting from usual representations of marginalised or otherwise “invisible” communities, Bertille Bak has developed a body of work staging populations or situations that she subverted with the close involvement of the protagonists themselves. Without a predefined script, Bak immerses herself in diverse communities, from a Roma community on the periphery of Paris, to shoe shiners in La Paz, asylum seekers residing in Pau, and shrimp peelers in Morocco. Working with these communities, she conceives collective rituals that produce emancipating images of them, free of the clichés spread by condescending documentaries and simplistic activist discourse alike. Far from neglecting their precarious living conditions, Bak gives those who are most directly concerned the means to represent themselves in other ways. Together, they create fictional narratives, interweaving performance art with makeshift theatre; stories that disrupt the established order and a sense of inevitability.