Maryam Jafri — Le jour d’après

Exhibition

Installation, photography

Maryam Jafri
Le jour d’après

Past: March 18 → July 11, 2015

Maryam jafri be tonsalon grid Maryam Jafri — Bétonsalon Depuis 2009, Maryam Jafri développe un travail de recherche autour de la représentation des indépendances. Bétonsalon invite l'arti... 2 - Bien Critique

In the Spring of 2015, Bétonsalon — Centre for Art and Research welcomes artist Maryam Jafri to develop a four months experimental exhibition and public program in Paris. Titled The Day After, it will be the artist’s first project in France and will activate a broad local and international network of collaborators and participants.

The Day After takes root in Maryam Jafri’s ongoing project Independence Day 1934-1975 (2009-present), an installation composed of photographs taken on the first independence day in former European colonies across Asia and Africa, between 1934 and 1975. The photos are sourced from the countries themselves and display striking similarities despite disparate geographical and temporal origins, revealing a political model exported from Europe and in the process of being cloned throughout the world. The installation gathers images sourced from 29 Asian and African archives, juxtaposed according to a specific grid around categories of events. In her arrangement, Jafri emphasizes the generic character of the rituals and ceremonies that took place during that 24 hours twilight period when a territory transforms into a nation-state. The grid, reminiscent of both photo-conceptualism and the storyboard medium, is broken, disturbing the ideological order at play in the images and suggesting non-linear readings.

The Day After will take this rare “collection of collections” — as Maryam Jafri calls it — as a starting point to question various artistic, historical and political issues arising from these images and their historical and institutional background. What do we see when we look at the photographic depiction of an event? How is history framed by its representations? How are images and their significations affected by their context of circulation? How do visual symmetries and comparisons transform our understanding of the narratives arising from the days of independence and, by extension, the days after? And, backstage, what do conditions of access and preservation reveal about the stakes projected onto these photographs?

Conceived as a space of encounters and debates, the exhibition will serve as a terrain of investigation to map these questions through a constellation of material and immaterial contributions (workshops, seminars and performances) bringing the audience together with Maryam Jafri and a network of researchers, scholars, journalists and artists. This program will develop in collaboration with several departments from Paris Diderot University; art schools (Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée; Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes-Métropole); and Kadist Art Foundation, among others.

The Day After is supported by the Usage des Patrimoines Numérisés (Paris Sorbonne Cité) network, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée, the Cultural Service of University Paris Diderot and PIANO, Prepared Platform for Contemporary Art. Maryam Jafri is a laureate of the international residency program Ville de Paris / Institut français Les Récollets.

Curated by Mélanie Bouteloup and Virginie Bobin

  • Archives en écho : Repenser les mémoires et les imaginaires des indépendances coloniales — séance 1/3 Event Thursday, April 23, 2015 5:30 PM → 7:30 PM

    A seminar led by the research group Le noeud de l’histoire : politique du corps post-colonial (Pauline Vermeren, Maïa Hawad, Jephthé Carmil)

  • Hors-champ : une après-midi ambivalente Event Saturday, April 25, 2015 2 PM → 7 PM

    With participants from the research group Equality / Hybridity / Ambivalence from École Supérieure d’Art et Design — Toulon Provence Méditerranée. What happens outside of a photograph’s frame? In what the photographer has decided to leave outside of the picture, the stories that exceed its borders?

  • Séance ciné Diderot — Projection de La Pyramide Humaine de Jean Rouch (1961, 1h30) Screening Wednesday, May 13, 2015 6 PM → 8 PM

    Screening of La Pyramide Humaine by Jean Rouch (1961, 1h30) off-site: Buffon auditorium, Paris Diderot. One year before the Ivory Coast becomes independent, Jean Rouch invites white and black high school students from Abidjian to stage scenes of friendship.

  • Archives en écho : Repenser les mémoires et les imaginaires des indépendances coloniales — séance 2/3 Event Thursday, May 21, 2015 5:30 PM → 7:30 PM

    A seminar led by the research group Le noeud de l’histoire : politique du corps post-colonial (Pauline Vermeren, Maïa Hawad, Jephthé Carmil)

  • Y a t’il un régime postcolonial des arts ? — Hors-les-Murs / Amphi Buffon Event June 1 → 2, 2015

    Off-site: Paris Diderot University An attempt to seize what is happening in the arts today, not from the viewpoint of the West and globalization, but from “the rest of the world” and postcoloniality, crossing perspectives from “here” and “there”.

  • D’autres gestes : usages des patrimoines Event Saturday, June 13, 2015 10 AM → 7 PM

    Other Gestures gives voice to artists, researchers, collectives and institutions who question the modalities of collecting, preserving, circulating and activating archival and heritage materials, notably through digitalization.

  • Archives en écho : Repenser les mémoires et les imaginaires des indépendances coloniales — séance 3/3 Event Thursday, June 18, 2015 5 PM → 7 PM

    A seminar led by the research group Le noeud de l’histoire : politique du corps post-colonial (Pauline Vermeren, Maïa Hawad, Jephthé Carmil).

  • Story of a Conservator — Performance de Kapwani Kiwanga Performance Thursday, June 25, 2015 at 7 PM

    Workshop with Marie-Laure Alain Bonilla, Beirut (Antonia Alampi, Jens Maier-Rothe, Sarah Rifky), Kapwani Kiwanga, Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga, Victor Wang as well as six participants (researchers, curators or artists) Marianna Hovhannisyan, Yu Ji, Moses Serubiri, Simon Soon, Yesomi Umolu, Natalia Zuluaga.

  • Conférence Européenne des Etudes Africaines — Hors-les-Murs : La Sorbonne Lecture Friday, July 10, 2015 at 2 PM

    Histoires de photographies contestataires/contestées est un panel organisé par Marian Nur Goni et Erika Nimis, deux chercheuses associées à l’exposition Le jour d’après, dans le cadre de l’ECAS (Conférence Européenne des Etudes Africaines). Y participeront notamment les historiens Helihanta Rajaonarison et Jürg Schneider, autres contributeurs de l’exposition.

  • Performances dans le cadre d’Africa Act Closing Saturday, July 11, 2015
13 Bibliothèque Zoom in 13 Bibliothèque Zoom out

9, esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Rdc de la Halle aux Farines
Face aux Grands Moulins de Paris sur le campus de l’Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot

75013 Paris

T. 01 45 84 17 56

www.betonsalon.net

Bibliothèque François Mitterrand

Opening hours

Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 7 PM

Admission fee

Free entrance

The artist

  • Maryam Jafri