Absences (2013)

Photos Audio

In 2013, I returned to Rwanda to photograph nature. The images dialogue with landscape painting, all the while readily playing with colonialist clichés portraying Rwanda as an « Eden of a thousand hills ». The landscapes, in extreme contrast to the horrors of genocide, seem to have regained the peace and quiet that once characterised them. This body of work is completed by two photos of memorial stones as well as witness accounts from three Rwandese women (available on this web page), Colette, Odette and Josephine, two survivors and a « righteous » Hutu.

“(…) Confronted with the ambivalence these landscapes reveal, it is not so much about admiring their irrepressible beauty than probing the cracks, the invisible mark that history has left behind on them. They are trompe-l’œil, traps not refuges, open graves where luxuriant nature is shown stubbornly going about its job of living. Nature that, in appearance, is deaf to man’s story.(…)”

Nathan Réra, in About Absences, 2014

 

Collections
・Collection Neuflize Vie ABN AMRO
・National Found for Contemporary Art, FR
・FRAC Auvergne, FR