Born in France in 1978.

Lives and works in Aubervilliers, near Paris.


Maxence Rifflet and Gil Gonzalez-Foerster met in the Sichuan capital Chengdu, a city of 10 million inhabitants that is currently the scene of large-scale urbanistic and human turmoil. Expanding endlessly, Chengdu is consuming the fertile countryside around it and absorbing a peasantry that can no longer live off the land. 

To the east the city is shedding its factories and the estates housing a socially deprived working class are being destroyed. 

Migrant workers, a labour force with no rights, are pouring in to build the residential future. Working together, Rifflet and Gonzalez-Foerster investigate and collect information and images in a frankly subjective way, with their relationship to the locals and the various hitches that arise being an integral part of the venture.


Maxence Rifflet presented his work at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2006 with Gil Gonzalez-Foerster, nominated by Yto Barrada for the "Dialogue de l’Humanité" Award: Chengdu, Winter 2006 at the Magasin Electrique.