Voyages Intérieurs: The Photographs of Hélène Akouavi Amouzou

About

PRESS RELEASE

April 29th, 2022 Contact: Lisa Martin For Immediate Release Phone: 917-721-7094

Email: Lisa@thewomensdarkroom.com

Voyages Intérieurs : The Photographs of Hélène Akouavi Amouzou At the Women’s Darkroom + Gallery
36 Waverly Ave., #403, Brooklyn, NY 11205
May 7th, 2022–July 2nd, 2022 Wednesday—Saturday, 1–6pm

Hélène Akouavi Amouzou was born in Togo, West Africa, in 1969 and has been living in Brussels for the last twenty years. This exhibition, at the Women’s Darkroom + Gallery, is her first solo show in New York. In 2004 she enrolled at the Academy of Drawing and Visual Arts in Brussels, where she studied video and photography. In 2008 she chose photography as the medium best suited for her artistic research and technical experiments. Amouzou prefers to work with film, which she sees as demanding greater attention to detail, allowing chance—through the act of long exposures—to play a role in the image-making process. Inspired by the American photographer Francesca Woodman, Amouzou creates her own distinctive and haunting imagery, which speaks to the contemporary issue of the displacement of people and of those in exile. “Self- portraiture is a way of writing without words. My aim is to reveal the deepest parts of myself,” says Amouzou.

Dr. Mark Sealy MBE is interested in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of the London-based photographic arts institution Autograph ABP since 1991 and has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including forthe critically acclaimed exhibitionHuman Rights Human Wrongsat Ryerson Image Centre inToronto in 2013 and at the Photographers’ Gallery in London in 2015. He also curated FotoFest 2020-African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, for which Amouzou contributed her photographs. The following is a transcript of aNovember 15th, 2021, Zoom interview between Amouzou and Dr. Sealy.

Dr. Mark Sealy: This is a long overdue conversation. You know the work is very special, and it’s currently in the African Cosmologies show at the Houston Museum that I curated—thank you for letting the work be shown. It was actually the first time I stood in front of the pieces instead of seeing them online. The size and scale of the work made them really intimate moments for me. I can’t help but think of them as punctuation marks in a conversation of diaspora.

Hélène Amouzou: Yes, thank you, it’s an honor and I’m very, very proud. I was surprised when you contacted me, because I said, who knows me, who saw my work? I had a difficult beginning here in Belgium. I had an editor treat me badly and he made me feel like what I was doing was not good enough. I asked him to use the images as universal work and he wrote to a friend of his that he thought I was having a big head. He didn’t see the quality and understand why I didn’t want to share my whole story with everybody. That touched me a lot because I was naive in the beginning; that was my inside. Without bringing these pictures out, I didn’t know what to be. That touched me, but now it’s okay. So, when I had the opportunity to take part in the African Cosmologies show with you in Houston, I was so proud. There are people in other countries or somewhere else, but they don’t need my whole story. I have already put my whole story, my intimate story, into the pictures. I never thought I would share my pictures, because they were about remembering my country, my mom, my family, and I’m here alone with my daughter, and I’m not getting through. When I discovered that people accepted them and took a minute to look at them, it made me very, very, happy.

MS: I think, Hélène, what I’m very keen on saying is that different eyes have different priorities. This idea that there is a universal space is problematic especially for those who can’t see or feel the way that you are. Even though we’re distant, as soon as I saw that work, I had no doubt in my mind that we were dealing with a very difficult and complex identity formation and the place of dislocation. It’s very evident in the work and there is a sense calling back to a time where maybe things were happier or the idea of travel being pleasurable or the idea of rebuilding the self as another kind of journey. The images for me, especially the long exposure, talk about that double sense of being, from somewhere else and needing to find a sense of visibility in the new location. They also remind me of all kinds of texts such as from Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, ideas of visibility and invisibility. It’s difficult to get that aspect right, and then sometimes an artist is able to produce something that enables us to see that form of invisibility. To get into that space and find yourself within that frame is difficult terrain in which to work. There is also a melancholy in the works that we need to recognize. There is a sense of despair present but underneath there is a sense of resilience within the author. It’s not “poor me” or “I’m struggling” but “I’m going through this and I’m dealing with it, and I’m happy to share these difficult moments in life,” and I think that’s a big gift to the audience. When an artist says in a really genuine way, I would like to offer you something to have access to, should you care to give me some of your time, that’s an incredible invitation, and I respect that when the work is this strong.

HA: Thank you.

MS: Lots of women will appreciate this work and they will have empathy with what you have been through. Artists that I think would enjoy this work are the late Maud Sulter [she would have been a great advocate for your work], Maxine Walker, Joy Gregory, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lorna Simpson—they would really take this work to heart. In my view you are in their company spiritually. These artists all talk about very complex issues about how we unfix the world’s desire to essentialize us. We are not essential subjects; we are all different. Unhinging the idea of who people think we are is critical and important work.

HA: Yes, thank you a lot.

MS: What I’m doing with the show African Cosmologies is saying that Africa is everywhere. It’s important to offer this curatorial sense of care—there is no North America without Africa, it’s been shaped by its past and all of these “Other People” are here because you were there. My great friend Stuart Hall said, “We are here because you were there,” and we are all interconnected. This world needs to be shared and resourced properly. Stop putting up the fences and building the concentration camps.

HA: Yes . . . there are times when people ask me to take part in an exhibition because I’m from Africa, an African woman—but that’s not right. We have something in common that we want to share. We have feelings and we have life in common. I don’t need to be something special because I’m African.

MS: This idea of a curatorial tick box needs to be made redundant. We want to share much more than our geographic location.

HA: Yes, thank you. Mark!

MS: Thank you, Hélène. I think sometimes there is an artist that arrives in the visual landscape that really nails it quite coherently: gender, place, location, otherness, loneliness, and that sense of needing to speak from that place. This work does that profoundly well. Thank you for sharing it with us.

HA: Thank you!

HÉLÈNE AMOUZOU EXHIBITIONS:
FOMU Antwerp, November 2021–January 2022, Belgium; Magma, 10th Triennale of Contemporary Art, Centre Culturel d’Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, September–November 2021, Belgium; Musée des Beaux Arts de Tournai, April–September 2021, Belgium; Fotofest 2020, Houston; 1st Triennale of Photography in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Brussels; Castrum Peregrini, 2018, Amsterdam; Tropenmuseum, 2014–2015, Amsterdam; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2014–2015, Norwich, England; Bozar, 2014, Brussels; Couleur Café, 2012, Antwerp, Brussels; Photoquai, Quai Branly, 2010, Brussels; "Portraits d'Artistes," Collection SMartbe, 2010, Brussels; B-Gallery, 2010, Brussels; Foyer of the Theater of Namur, 2009–2010, Namur, Belgium; House of Cultures and Social Cohesion, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean; Publication: "Between the Wallpaper and the Wall," Husson Publishing, 2009; Prize: Winner of the "POZE 2–Self- Portraits" contest organized by Bozar, "Summer of Photography," June 2008. For more information, please visit heleneamouzou.be.

A small limited-edition catalog, with an essay by Danielle Leenaerts (Chargée de CoursHistoire et Esthétique de la Photographie, Université Libre de Bruxelles), and a poster will be available for sale at the gallery during the show.