French photographer and videographer Edith Roux puts her practice in the vein of conceptual documentary where a reflection on the conditions of image production is integrated. Her latest work made in the Côte d’Ivoire is being exhibited at Galerie Dix9 in Paris from October 13 through December 2 and at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France from October 24, 2017 through February 4, 2018. Here she tries to deconstruct certain images from colonial times and questions France’s relationship with its former colony. In an attempt to open a space for critical reflection that contributes to the decolonization of imagination, this research is fed by post-colonial theories where the archives serves as inspiration.
Les Fantômes de Bassam (2016), a series composed of eighteen photographs, was made in the historic city of Grand Bassam, situated about forty kilometers east of Abidjan. The city was the first colonial, port area, economic, and administrative capital of the Côte d’Ivoire. The old French neighborhood, today abandoned, is testimony to colonial functional urbanism and architecture. The adjacent N’zima neighborhood reveals the permanence of indigenous cultures.
Edith Roux’s interest for ruin was born out of her capacity to make several temporalities coexist. An in-betweenness, the fragmentation brings us back to what is no longer, but is affirmed by the vestiges of what is left. The photographs show habitants staged in their own role. The artist inserts characters from postcards dating from colonial times. Only the grain, the printing raster, and the black and white reveal the provenance of these encrustations The confrontation of current and older elements, where different temporalities have a dialogue with each other, aims to make the viewer reflect. These colonialists coming from another time, are they the repressed figures of history? What kinds of colonialism hide behind these faces erased by time?
Les Portés (2017) is a series made from postcards dating from the colonial era in the Côte d’Ivoire between 1908 and 1937. These postcards depict colonists carried by Africans in hammocks and sedan chairs. In certain images, the artist isolates the colonists floating in space in absurd, seemingly ridiculous positions. In other images, only the carriers remain, who seem relieved from their position of servitude in which the colonists had placed them. Some of the cut bodies, corresponding to where there was a hammock or a colonist, are like traces left on a wounded society. The gestures of carrying are left suspended and the raised arms are transformed into a resistance momentum. Are they precursors of hope towards the desire of an Africa which will walk a self chosen path ?
Aside from the photographs, the video Le Defilé (2016) is taking place on the beach at Grand Bassam where street vendors line up to show their merchandise to tourists. But the sound of their voices, covered by the loud sea, does not seem to reach the tourists behind the barrier, where the camera is placed. Caught between a sea with no horizon and a blue fence, these mobile vendors coming from different African countries continue to line up. But what is suggested by the visible breach to the right of the fence?
With Melêh nian bêh/Je vous regarde (2016), the viewer is face to face with a postcard from the Côte d’Ivoire dating from the 20th century. Suddenly, the card is animated and the woman portrayed starts to talk. Her lowered eyes start to move and look into the face of the viewer. The woman speaks in N’zima, one of the languages spoken in Grand Bassam. The phrase, “melêh nian bêh,” is followed by its French translation, “je vous regarde,” (“I’m watching you,” in English). These women speak to the viewer through history and attempt to re-appropriate their own image and escape from the grip of the colonial male gaze.
From one horizon to another, the operated displacements in Edith Roux’s images try to put the historic narrative into movement in a contemporary geopolitical context where the decolonization of the imaginary seems to march towards the future.
Edith Roux, d’un horizon à l’autre
October 13 through December 2, 2017
Galerie Dix9
19 Rue des Filles du Calvaire
75003 Paris
France
Another exhibition currently on view :
Edith Roux, Paysages français : une aventure photographique 1984-2017
From October 24, 2017 through February 4, 2018
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Quai François Mauriac
75706 Paris
France
