Collective exhibition at the invitation of curators Éline Gourgues, Do Tuong Linh and Karl Joseph, featuring the series « Études / Le Royaume des moustiques » by Sylvie Bonnot.
The image becomes a territory when official narratives fail.
Archive / Past Archive explores the image as both document and fiction, evidence and absence. It brings together creators who respond to the silences of the archive by inventing the forms of writing that these gaps make possible. These artists from Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, France and elsewhere construct diasporic histories precisely where absence is felt. The links between Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, shaped by French colonial circulations, become material for storytelling. In 1884, Guyana received deported « annamites », then in 1931, 535 Vietnamese political prisoners. During the Indochina War, Antillean and Guyanese soldiers fought in Asia, followed by the settlement of the Hmong in 1977. Drawing on family albums and intergenerational memory, each work becomes a fragment of an archive fever (Derrida) — the anxious desire to preserve what is fading. (…)
Through these works, photography becomes resistance. These artists reopen the archives in order to unsettle them, to recompose them. Echoing are the « survivances » of trauma (Saidiya Hartman): unspeakable inheritances inscribed in family memory and aesthetic gestures. How can photography make visible what has been kept out of frame? This exhibition becomes a laboratory where dispersed geographies converse through contemporary forms of writing.
Artists: Emeline Ametis, Sylvie Bonnot, Manon Ficuciello, Adeline Rapon, Claire Zaniolo, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Nathyfa Michel, Flora Nguyen, Prune Phi, Nguyen Phuong Le, Dinh Q Le, Quang Lâm, Sol Kim, Laila Hida
Exhibition produced in partnership with: PhotoHanoi & La Station Culturelle
And for Le Royaume des moustiques: ECPAD X ADAGP, Cité Internationale des Arts, ADHEX X Interface-Dijon, Picto
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Meeting and portfolio reviews: Friday, December 5, 8–10:30 a.m., Coco Soda, Cayenne
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Meeting and screening: Saturday, December 6, 7 p.m., Charvein, with Mélisse and the MAZ
