The series Un passé sous silence by Emilie Arfeuil was selected by Krysztof Candrowicz (Director of Hamburg Trienale and founder of Lodz fotofestival) and Céline Duval (Stimultania Strasbourg) during portfolio review at the Gaite Lyrique on the 15 and 16 November 2014.
April 17th, 2015, will mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge, which led to three years of violence. Cambodia still bears the traces of this genocide and is rebuilding itself on what a traumatized generation has left unsaid. It is a land of silence.
It was my resemblance to his missing sister that led to my meeting with Tut, along with mutual curiosity and the return of memory. From this tenuous link, over the course of three years, we forged a relationship built on trust, during which he shared with me the memories of the torture he endured as a teenager, memories which he had repressed for so many years.
Because we do not speak the same language, we communicated silently, through body language. Stories of past violence could be triggered by the most mundane objects. A cut flower, amputation; a bag of fruit, suffocation. Tut went to far as to act out the tortures to testify to what he experienced.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
http://www.emiliearfeuil.com
http://hanslucas.com/earfeuil/photo
http://www.freelens.fr
