The genesis of this enigmatic exhibition title

The title of this exhibition held at the Quai Branly comes from a text written in 1801 by the German writer Ludwig Hülsen. While observing a landscape, he describes his vision and how his eye was able to reconstruct a cohesion in a foreign landscape that was previously perceived in fragments. According to Chrisitine Barthe, the curator, the title thus invites the visitor to appropriate/re-appropriate images while questioning our ability to interpret visual information and our relationship to the notion of temporality.

The exhibition, divided into five parts with a preamble, opens with the spectacular work of Cameroonian Samuel Fosso, SIXSIXSIX, consisting of 666 Polaroid self-portraits, never before shown in their entirety. A way of instantly plunging the visitor into an unknown universe in which one gets lost. With these raw images, without retouching or make-up, the visitor is directly confronted with the question: Who is looking at whom?

Another work by Samuel Fosso entitled African Spirits can also be found a little further on in the third part of the exhibition, in which he embodies several key figures of African independence and of the African-American civil rights movement. These include Aimé Césaire, Malcolm X and Seydou Keita, among others.

First part of the exhibition: Is the image a stare?

The first part is made up of six series of photographs that approach the practice as a collection of visual fragments of reality. It reflects the fact that visual information can be interpreted in many different ways depending on how the photographic framing operation was approached. Photography can be a window to urban unrest as shown in the work of South African Guy Tillim in Harrara, Luanda or Nairobi, or a meticulous investigation, a way of collecting clues as revealed in Jo Ractliffe‘s photography. It can also be a way of recreating a particular atmosphere with colours, smells and emotions, as can be seen in the work of Mexican José Luis Cuevas.

Second part of the exhibition: Recognising yourself in an image

This section is based, among other things, on Santu Mofokeng’s seminal work, The black photo / Look at me, a slide show that reproduces historical photographs of the black South African bourgeoisie of the early 20th century. The South African artist addresses the question of the image as a means of identification, as a model, as a reference. These photographs show portraits of the black South African bourgeoisie at the beginning of the 20th century that had disappeared from our memories. The artist questions the conditions and meaning of these visibilities at the time they were made and today.

Third part of the exhibition: Images reflect on each other

This part, which constitutes the large central space of the exhibition, gives way to forms of visual narration. It deals with working methods, the way in which we associate images to create a story, and the way in which photography provokes speech. It includes works by Katia Kameli (France), several large-scale installations such as Brook Andrew’s Horizon (Australia) and Dinh Q’s Crossing the farther shore. Lê (Vietnam) . About the latter, it is a construction composed of several suspended photos forming a sort of refuge. Having lost all his family photos during his exodus, the artist tries to preserve a trace of South Vietnamese history after a large part of the population had to flee because of the Khmer Rouge invasion in 1978. He thus seeks to fill in the historical gaps with various photographs acquired during his travels in Vietnam.

Fourth part of the exhibition: Landscape stories

A fourth section presents several artists who practice in-depth investigations. The works offer possibilities for alternative stories related to specific but as yet little-known events in our history, where the image will act as a revealer of a situation or a questioning. Artists such as Sammy Baloji (Democratic Republic of Congo), Mario García Torrès (Mexico), Heba Y. Amin (Egypt), or the imaginary recompositions of Gosette Lubondo (Democratic Republic of Congo). Each explores in its own way the territorial question and the notion of appropriation associated with it.

Passages in time, last part of the exhibition

This part evokes various staggered temporalities. It shows how representations that are distant in time can suddenly take on a new relevance, be questioned, reactivated or reversed. We find, for example, artists such as Yoshua Okón, who offers an ironic rereading of Joseph Beuys’ performance I like America and America likes me, or Alexander Apóstol who, while visiting a house in Caracas in the 1950s, questions the transition to modernity in Venezuela. The Colombian artist José Alejandro Restrepo also illustrates this phenomenon by travelling to the mountains of Latin America to reproduce the journey of the explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

“Who is gazing”

Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

From June 30th – November 1st, 2020

37 Quai Branly, 75007

Paris

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Although the meteoric rise of Helena Rubinstein, the leading business woman of the 20th century, whom Cocteau called “The Empress of Beauty”, is familiar to all, her career as an intuitive collector and her pioneering role in the recognition of the arts of Africa and Oceania is probably less well known. Through sixty-five works from her collection, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac pays tribute to her, and reveals Madame’s fascination for non-European arts.

Madame’s collection, built up mainly in Paris over the course of her encounters, and continually enriched thanks to her keen eye, comprises over 400 pieces of non-European art. In her apartments in Paris, New-York and London, this extraordinary collection sat alongside works by Modernist painters and sculptors such as Chagall, Braque, Brancusi, Modigliani, Picasso and Miró.

Her collection achieved mythical status through her participation in major exhibitions, such as African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in 1935, and was dispersed in 1966 in New York in a series of remarkable sales, which marked a key stage in the recognition of African arts. Today her name still associated with the period of the first enthusiasts of “distant” arts, few of whom were women.

Helena Rubinstein was a pioneer. At that time, the market for non-European arts was just beginning to develop. By assiduously frequenting intellectual circles, art galleries and auctions, she had access to a wide range of diverse objects. Introduced to this field by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, Madame collected the most unexpected pieces, particularly from Nigeria, Cameroon, the Popular Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She liked the expressiveness and the power of these sculptures, which matched her avant-garde tastes. Her focus on the figurative aspects of utilitarian objects (heddle pulleys, doors, seats, musical instruments), and on the sculptural treatment of the face by African artists fits with a constant personal search for beauty and its many possible definitions.

A major research programme preceded this exhibition. Hélène Joubert, head of the museum’s African Heritage Collections and exhibition curator, conducted research over two years in national and international institutions as well as in major private collections and archives. A large iconography has been put together to illustrate the history of this collection.

Guided by sales catalogues from 1966, various publications and references, and by a collection of testimonies and an analysis of photographs of Helena Rubinstein’s apartments, the curator highlights the construction of a collection, its history and its distinctive characteristics. Madame’s unusual sensibility is also revealed here, an aspect that has been little explored until now.

Helena Rubinstein’s collection shows that her artistic choices were bold in the eyes of her contemporaries. Her visionary approach and her curiosity drew her towards rare and powerful works that have come of age over time. A selection of sixty-five objects from Africa and Oceania, from Insulindia and the Americas to a lesser extent, evokes the choices of this major figure among the collectors in the first half of the 20th century.

This exhibition is on view at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (Paris – France) until June 28, 2020.

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