Pakistan is among the countries hosting the most refugees worldwide. In december 2025, Pakistan had more than one million registered Afghan refugees. In addition, there are an estimated 700,000 unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Since 2023, the situation of these Afghan refugees has deteriorated. Pakistan launched the Illegal Foreigners' Repatriation Plan. This has left Afghan refugees in Pakistan trapped. The Red Cross reports a humanitarian disaster on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Afghans deported by Pakistan end up in camps with shortages of everything and a rapid spread of diseases.

In addition to Afghan refugees, Pakistan has 2.5 million internally displaced people. Climate change plays a role in this. People in Pakistan are confronted with extreme weather conditions. The extreme monsoon in August 2025 led to severe flooding, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. The majority of these refugees end up in slums, a collection of mud and concrete houses with corrugated iron roofs on vast, dusty plains or garbage dumps. Some shelters are little more than a tent canvas.

For her project, Shadows in Pakistan, Alice photographed unregistered refugees in various slums around Islamabad. These places are a no-man's-land. Refugees live there isolated from Pakistani society. As unregistered refugees, this vast group of people has no official identity.

In January 2015, Alice began her project during a trip to Islamabad. Alice made this trip with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Muhammed Muheisen. He had been focusing his camera on this extremely vulnerable group for years. His stories deeply touched Alice. Her own desire to have children played a role in this. "How can I bring a child into this world when there are millions of children out there who officially don't exist?"

Without ever finding an answer to this, Alice constructed a series of works between 2015 and 2026 that portray these vulnerable children. “In Pakistan, I walked through scenes as if I had landed in the Middle Ages. But while Europe was in the Dark Ages, Pakistan was part of a progressive Islamic empire. Persian miniature art depicted scenes of wealth in the castles of the Mughal court. A historical reversal.” Using the visual language of this miniature art, Alice builds dream castles from the precarious situation of these children. “It touches me that these children haven't lost their imagination. A simple balloon sets a slum in motion. Running children and laughter echoing against the corrugated iron roofs. My artwork can't change the lives of these children, I realize that all too well. Yet I hope that my work shines a small spotlight on them. Through my imagination, I send them a wish for a more hopeful future.”