Expression(s) décoloniale(s) #3

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON OUR COLLECTIONS TO DECOLONIZE YOUR THOUGHT AND IMAGINATION

Every historical narrative is a construction and an expression of a viewpoint on oneself and on others. History museums are no exception to this rule. Exhibiting a collection’s objects is akin to presenting the perception that the collectors had of themselves and of others over time. 

In a moment when we are rethinking the history of Humanity as an interconnected one on a global scale, it is essential to point out that many of the objects and documents on display in museums today are intrinsically imbued with a colonial perspective.

In an attempt to understand exactly how these pieces were seen when they were acquired, to distance ourselves from them, to question them and measure their impact on us – both in what we know and how we imagine things – the Musée d’histoire de Nantes, as part of the third edition of Expression(s) décoloniale(s), has once again invited an historian and an artist from the African continent to dialogue with the museum’s collections.

Internationally renowned Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo will invest the museum’s rooms with his work, which shows an unfailing commitment to questioning the major issues of our time, while also establishing a dazzling relationship between past and present. Themes exploring the fundamental imbalances of the world we live in, the structural imbalances of exchange that characterize it, and the inequal opportunities and multiple discriminations resulting from them, make his work eminently contemporary and political. Questions revolving around cultural memory are also present in his work, but do not prevent a celebration of the fundamental power of life, as vigorous as it is unexpected. Prolific and generous, Toguo will present some twenty works throughout the Musée d’Histoire de Nantes’ permanent collection, adding a new imperative to this year’s edition: the need to act.

Barthélémy Toguo was born in Cameroon in 1967. He studied at various art schools in Ivory Coast, France, and Germany, and now lives between Paris and Bandjoun, where he founded an innovative space that combines an art school, a cultural centre, and a farm in 1999 called “Bandjoun Station”.

Internationally renowned today, his work is shown the world over in a great variety of forms, combining both the most robust and the most fragile materials. Each of his productions bears witness to his early and constant commitment to defending the great humanitarian and ecological causes of our time while giving a voice to the voiceless.

In the spirit of hospitality, Toguo wanted to associate five artists with this year’s edition at the Musée d’Histoire de Nantes.

Jean-François Boclé (Martinique), Moreira Chonguiça (Mozambique), Rosana Paulino (Brazil), Monica Toiliye (Democratic Republic of Congo), Kara Walker (USA), have come to join him. Painters, video artists, sculptors or performers or musiciens, each of them has found their place in the museum’s spaces, and their resonance with history.

Legacy, memory, pain, and historical scars are addressed through their work. But so is the victory over them.

Another form of confrontation with reality takes place in their presence; another dialogue is born out of their encounter, which does not exclude any part of our sensitivity.

Another confrontation with reality takes place in their presence. Another dialogue is born through this encounter – one that spares no part of our sensitivity.

Historian François Wassouni –  a specialist in the history of violence and a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Maroua in Cameroon – will present roughly ten new captions for objects that are emblematic of Nantes’ and France’s colonial history, which resonate with his research topics and his approach to questions of national memory.

Curator: Krystel Gualdé (Scientific Director of the Musée d’histoire de Museum)