The Sarajevo-born artist Lala Meredith-Vula shared a studio with Damien Hirst at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s and participated in the Hirst-organised Freeze exhibition of 1988. In 2001, she spent five months in Rome afterwinning a Sargent Fellowship.

What was your proposal for Rome?
My work is photography-based and, until 2001, I focused mainly on Albanian and Kosovan life during and after the war. Rome has a large Eastern European community, mainly of illegal immigrants who effectively work as slaves and my proposal was to explore this underclass, but the final project, which involved photographing these workers inside Rome's ornate galleries and churches, develoepd from the experience of living and working there.

How did you choose your subjects and locations?
I photographed people whoe conomically wereat the bottom of the pile: cleaners and labourers employed on a casual basis to do the jobs no one else wanted. The buildings were chosen because they were beautiful spaces but also because of resonances with the subiects. A Moldavian man is seen, for example, in front of a sculpture of Julius Caesar that has a similar face. Many of these people have incredible faces because they've seen so much; they've had life boiled down to the essence. An estonian man, who had watched one of his children die of starvation, for instance, was working to pay off the Mafia who'd financed his passage to Rome.

How did the experience change your work?
It's a challenge to live in another situation and culture and it made me realise that I didn't have to go to Albania or Kosova to make work, I could do it in other places.

Is It still an influence?
My latest exhibition at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome came directly out of the fellowship. The Rome School is very good at arranging introductions and I got to know the owners while I was there. I took some photographs in their gallery and they became interested in my work and commissioned me to do these landscapes of an area about 50 miles outside of Rome. Since the residency, I've been back to Rome many times and I'm learning Italian. It has totally changed my life.

Helen Sumpter