La clairière d’Eza Boto - Opus III ""De nombreux souvenirs affluaient à sa mémoire""

In this Opus III of Eza Boto’s clearing, designed for the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, artistic director Yves Chatap invites John Akomfrah, Malala Andrialavidrazana and Ndary Lo to imagine realities in which the representation and perception of space-time becomes the place to reveal the complexity of our identities.

John Akomfrah combines archives, sounds and texts in his filmic works to make us travel in a universe where memory, postcolonialism, temporality and aesthetics form an interdependent network suitable to account for globalization. In a poetic style, he reveals to us the need to take into account the polyphony of individual or collective stories. By using planispheres as a starting point, Malala Andrialavidrazana agrees to reveal in her works the status of the map as a privileged tool of knowledge by its qualities of apprehension and capture of the problems resulting from a changing world.

As for Ndary Lo, the sculptor wanted to free himself of an art and make it accessible to all. Strengthened by the spirituality of his creations, he brings a new vision of the sacred through a proposal of sculptures. In addition to artistic trends and trends, Ndary Lo’s work is at once mysterious, intimate and universal.

Beyond geographical and cultural references, this chapter of Promenades dans la Clairière d'Eza Boto challenges the fundamental crises we are experiencing. John Akomfrah, Malala Andrialavidrazana and Ndary Lo invite us to decolonize our gaze, to review certain ideological and aesthetic stereotypes.

To learn more, visit the YCOS-Project website.

Participants :

John Akomfrah (Ghana/United Kingdom), Malala Andrialavidrazana (Madagascar/France), Ndary Lô (Senegal)

About Yves Chatap (Cameroun)  :

Curator and art critic

« La clairière d’Eza Boto » (Eza Boto's clearing) is considered a reflective work around the
well-known book "Cruel City" by Mongo Beti aka Eza Boto, publishe in 1954.

Born in 1932 in Akométam near Yaoundé under the name of Biyidi-Awala Alexandre, Mongo Beti published the new "Sans haine et sans amour" in 1953, then "Cruel City" in 1954 under the same pseudonym of Eza Boto. He, who will use various nicknames during his career, will no longer use this pseudonym of Eza Boto. Mongo Beti’s work is linked to his exile of more than 30 years in the city of Rouen, where he worked as a French teacher. This essential author of African intellectual literature has unfortunately not found recognition in France.

The story of Mongo Beti, between chosen and imposed exile, invites everyone to consider artistic development as revolted or suffered times. Mobile and plural, this programmation includes exhibitions on several sites in Normandy and a river residency for international artists on the Seine river. Four Opus nourish this artistic reflection.

This program of meetings and exchanges between artists from different and intersecting cultures, originating from two continents will re-contextualize the journey of one of the precursors of African thought.

About YCOS-Project :

YCOS-Project aims to support artists by working alongside them in curatorial development, production and enhancement of their artistic projects.

YCOS-Project intends to develop a South-South approach, and attaches major importance to ensuring that the selected projects contribute to the visibility of artistic and social changes.