The Struggle of Memory: Selected Artists I
Mohamed Camara *1985, Bamako, Mali
Lives and works in Bamako, Mali Mohamed Camara began taking photographs in the streets of Mali’s capital, Bamako, when he was just sixteen years old. Inspired by a book of Malian photography, he borrowed a small digital camera and, with no formal tuition, produced a remarkable body of work. Finding the street too hostile, he began photographing domestic interiors. His first series, Chambres Maliennes (Malian Rooms, 2001), attracted considerable international attention after it was exhibited in Paris in 2002. In these intimate scenes of life in the home, we see lying and sleeping figures, windows, curtains, and colored walls. Camara’s subsequent series, Certains matins (Some Mornings, 2004–2006) invites viewers into intimate morning situations, somewhere between reality and mise-en-scène. Many feature only a door, or a window, through which diffused light enters a bedroom or living space. In Certain matins, la prière (Some Mornings, Prayer), 2006, a figure has risen early to pray. Sitting on a prayer mat decorated with Islamic designs, he faces east, ready to perform the Fajr Salah, the first of the five daily Muslim prayers. The morning sun illuminates the hands but leaves the upper body in shadow, intimating that prayer is a bridge between the seen and unseen. An uncertain relationship is glimpsed in Certains matins, au réveil… (Some Mornings When You Wake Up…), 2006, which captures the shadows of a man and woman standing face to face. The composition is ambiguous; are these figures lovers, or simply friends? Are they arguing, or about to embrace? Humor also has a place in Camara’s photography, as seen in Certains matins, ma cousine me fait des trucs que je ne comprends pas (Some Mornings, My Cousin Does Things I Don't Understand), 2006, in which we see the antics of the photographer’s young cousin playing with a woman’s dress. But there is ambiguity here too; the protagonist in this bizarre scene could be mistaken for a victim of violence. It is only the lighthearted title that reveals the close familial relationship between photographer and subject. The striking originality of Camara’s subjects, his whimsical aesthetic and poetic sensibility present a radical alternative to the photojournalistic images of Mali seen in Western magazines, and, indeed, the celebrated work of Malian studio photographers such as Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, made in the 1960s when the country was newly independent from France.
In addition to the works in the exhibition "The Struggle of Memory", Mohamed Camara can be seen as a floor artist in the twin towers of the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.
Image: Mohamed Camara
Certains matins no. 62, cousine me fait des trucs que je ne comprends pas, 2006
Samuel Fosso *1962, Kumba, Cameroon
Lives and works in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR) Having moved to Nigeria from Cameroon at a young age, Samuel Fosso was forced to flee the country just a few years later because of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). Relocating to the CAR, he worked for his uncle as a shoemaker before starting his own photography studio, aged just thirteen. By day, he worked on commercial projects while at night he experimented with self-portraits, a genre that has since come to define his practice. The photographs in the series 70s Lifestyle Series, 1975–78, show the young photographer wearing stylish outfits commissioned from a local tailor and striking poses inspired by popculture images of African American musicians and celebrities. In each image, he adopts a different persona, transforming into characters that are at once himself and any number of invented personalities—a strategy that has characterized his work across five decades. Since the 1970s, Fosso’s self-portraits have become more elaborate and theatrical, dramatizing historical or autobiographical characters and switching genders to explore cultural codes of representation and photography’s role in constructing identities. Moving beyond simple self-representation, his later projects were described by curator Okwui Enwezor as a “self-constituted theater of postcolonial identity. For his African Spirits series of 2008, he reenacted historical photographs of pan-African liberation and civil rights movement leaders, while in the 2013 series ALLONZENFANS, Fosso dressed in French colonial military uniforms in memory of the countless Africans who fought alongside the French army during the two world wars. The same year, he addressed the neo-colonial relationship between China and debt-ridden African countries by assuming the role of Mao Zedong in the Emperor of Africa series. In the atypical series Memoire d’un ami (Memory of a Friend, 2000), Fosso plays himself, recreating the events of a fateful night in June 1997, when Tala, his Senegalese friend and neighbor, was attacked and murdered by armed militia. Although the black-and-white images are carefully staged, each one appears like a snapshot taken in the moment. The sequence of nine black-and-white self-portraits shows the artist naked and vulnerable; he is woken in his bed by a commotion before appearing at a window with a towel around his waist and, looking bewildered and frightened, attempting to hide himself by crouching in a cardboard box. Here, memory is presented as documentary and traumatic experience becomes cathartic performance.
In addition to the works in the exhibition "The Struggle of Memory", Samuel Fosso can be seen as a floor artist in the twin towers of the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.
Image: Samuel Fosso
70’s Lifestyle Series, 1975-78
Lebohang Kganye *1990, Johannesburg, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa Describing herself as a storyteller, Lebohang Kganye combines an interest in the materiality of photography with family history and archival material to navigate themes of memory, fantasy, and identity formation. Her installations, sculptures, photographs, and moving image works are a response to personal loss and mourning—of close family members, but also of history, identity, knowledge, and ancestral traditions. Central to her practice is a framing of the tension between photography’s capacity to factually describe moments in time and its illusory claim to objectivity. For Kganye, photography can only provide partial accounts of the past; gaps in the story are filled by pieces of exchanged personal history while the rest is left to the imagination. Taking family photograph albums as its starting point, Kganye’s short animated film, Ke sale teng (I’m Still Here), 2017, explores the role that such collections play in building personal identity and an understanding of one’s heritage. A sequence of short vignettes, featuring ghostly, silhouetted figures of the artist’s late mother and grandfather, reimagine moments from her family’s past that she had no experience of, except through secondhand stories. The film introduces viewers to the string of displacements and temporary accommodations that her family experienced under apartheid, as they were uprooted and resettled because of the Land Act, which prohibited Black South Africans from owning or renting land in areas that the government had designated as “white.” A cornerstone of apartheid, the legislation was instrumental in restricting the rights of people across the country, forcing families like Kganye’s to move from place to place. Ke sale teng (I’m Still Here) finds its genesis in Kganye’s earlier series of inkjet prints, Reconstruction of a Family, 2016, in which large cardboard cutout figures and other elements based on family photographs and half-remembered stories are similarly arranged in a series of evocative dioramas. The central protagonist in both projects is Kganye’s grandfather, who moved from the Orange Free State Province to the Transvaal to find work. Although the artist was born in his Johannesburg home, she never knew him except through oral accounts shared by family members. It is these stories, combined with photographic sources, on which her visual narratives are based. Although rooted in a specific time and place, Kganye’s themes of displacement, migration, and the search for a place to belong have universal resonance.
Image: Lebohang Kganye
Ke Sale Teng, 2017