It is not by chance that this exhibition presented at the Musée de l’Homme Place du Trocadéro in Paris is opening May 10. This date corresponds to mainland France commemorating the abolition of slavery. To commemorate is to pay tribute. Having images serve the event is meant to acknowledge and heal.
Impressions Mémorielles is an exhibition gathering work on the theme of the slave trade and slavery by ten French, African, and Brazilian photographers: Céline Anaya Gautier, José Bassit, Robert Charlotte, David Damoison, Claudio Edinger, Mirtho Linguet, Fabrice Monteiro, Samuel Nja Kwa, Véronique Vial & Adolphe Catan (1899-1979). At the same time, writers, poets, musicians, historians, and storytellers are invited to exchange with the public via conferences and lectures. The challenge is for the word to be freed to serve a collective intelligence.
Each presented artist is offering a contemporary view on this long repressed, obscured, disparaged subject. It is about understanding, going back to the traces of slavery through places, demonstrations, stigmas, and that which, in time, characterized slave trade. “After centuries of unequal, unjust, abominable treatment, we need to demystify and educate,” explains Samuel Nja Kwa, the exhibition’s curator.
Impressions Mémorielles
Collective exhibition of the theme of remembering slavery
From May 10 through July 10, 2017
Musée de l’Homme
17, Place du Trocadéro,
75016 Paris
France
Catalogue
Published by éditions DUTA
25 euros
