Mythologies of resistance. A new geography of memory in the Caribbean With the Cham project, Nicola Lo Calzo reconstructs a common past, a history of the legacy of colonial slavery in the Atlantic world in the 21st century. Since almost a decade, he has been interested in the intangible still existing heritage, in the multiple descendants […]
Mythologies of resistance. A new geography of memory in the Caribbean
With the Cham project, Nicola Lo Calzo reconstructs a common past, a history of the legacy of colonial slavery in the Atlantic world in the 21st century. Since almost a decade, he has been interested in the intangible still existing heritage, in the multiple descendants and various manifestations of memories of colonial slavery, its resistances and abolitions. Colonial slavery was an economic and social system that organized life in Europe, America and Africa for four centuries. This system fabricated the ideology of race and racial hierarchy. Owing to the economic reasons and the accumulation of capital, it produced the white privilege and strengthened the heterosexual patriarchy that organize our contemporary society. A total process whose perpetuation is explained by the persistence of social relations and structures even today.
Through testimonies and investigations, The Cham project contributes to the formation of the collective memory: the photographer collects narratives, observes rites, captures all immaterial traces related to the long period of the African slavery. What remains of this period ? Cham is above all a subjective journey through a new geography of memory and world that wants to “move the center” and raise awareness about knowledge and practices at the margins, their custodial peoples and incessant circulation beyond the Atlantic. In this exhibition, a selection of images from the two series realized in Haiti (Ayiti,2013) and French Antilles (Mas, 2012-2018) are shown. Where memory remains silent due to the pain of reminiscence, Lo Calzo looks for implicit traces in personal narratives, family archives, abandoned spaces, places of memory as well as in animist and Christian rituals. Each photograph delivers a personal and yet global story.
The exhibition is curated by Jeanne Mercier.
Opening: 13.06, 7PM
Place: Art_Inkubator, Tymienieckiego 3
Artist talk: 15.06 3PM, Art_Inkubator, start: theatrical room