Photography Exhibition Kotama Bouabane

A 1970s Kodak technical manual relies on a photograph of a freshly cracked coconut, into which two straws have been inserted: the symbol of an imagined and exotic south, where North Americans project themselves lying under palm trees, taking it slow, doing nothing, or else sipping their cocktails directly from coconuts. Undertaking a satirical investigation of this colonialist image, Kotama Bouabane reverses the relationship between subject and object. Once the object of the gaze, the coconut comes out of the image and makes images of its own, becoming the apparatus of photography; photographed by the coconut we are no longer spectators, and it is the coconut’s turn to look at us with amusement. Looking through its eyes, we are encouraged to parody our own gaze.

These exhibitions are part of the Inventing Risk programming, which invites us to reconsider the way we make art and the way we think the image.

Read more at www.vuphoto.org