How is a country’s national story told through its architecture? When should the structures of the past be dispensed for the future? The Past is a Foreign Country is the first solo exhibition in North America by the Ivorian artist François-Xavier Gbré, whose photographs survey relics of the built environment, from the ruins of colonial-era monuments to the futurist symbols of the cosmopolitan city.
The exhibition features site-specific installations of immersive wallpaper prints and a chronicle of more than fifty buildings and civic structures throughout West Africa and France. United by a methodical, often distanced perspective on architecture and landscape as a form of documentary evidence, Gbré’s images summon the personal experience of public space and the social aspirations encoded in concrete, rebar, clay, and dust.
EXHIBITION
The Past is a Foreign Country by François-Xavier Gbré
August 28th – October 9th, 2015
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
Whitehead Campus Center
Haverford College
370 Lancaster Avenue
Haverford, PA 19041
(610) 896-1287
USA
http://exhibits.haverford.edu/thepastisaforeigncountry
http://www.fx-photo.com
