Guided tour & talk with Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (EN)
The archive as a challenge to memory
09.09.2023
14:30 > 15:15 : Guided tour of the exhibition extra with Mehdi-Georges Lahlou & Tania Nasielski
15:30 > 17:30 : Talk : The archive as a challenge to memory
CENTRALE | atelier
Place Sainte-Catherine 44, 1000 Brussels
Flat rate: €8 (guided tour & talk)
Booking here
CENTRALE for contemporary art is holding a talk in the context of the exhibition extra by artists Mehdi-Georges Lahlou and guest Candice Breitz. The artists will be joined by Hicham Khalidi, currently director of the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and Dr. Véronique Clette-Gakuba, whose work focuses on postcolonial issues such as the creation of a black world in Brussels. The meeting will be moderated by Anne Wetsi Mpoma, art historian, researcher and activist exploring strategies of resistance towards a more consistent society in terms of social, racial and environmental justice.
The exhibition extra by Mehdi-Georges Lahlou and his guest Candice Breitz uses archives to question both memory and the collective unconscious. The speakers will discuss how this exhibition fits in with post/de-colonial issues tackled by an international city such as Brussels. A city where many actors are actively advocating post-colonial reparations; better access to archives; commemorating non-European war veterans and transmitting a truly multi-vocal history.
Mediator : Anne Wetsi Mpoma
With : Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Hicham Khalidi, Véronique Clette-Gakuba. Curator : Tania Nasielski.
Véronique Clette-Gakuba is a researcher at the ULB Institute of Sociology, and a member of the Présences noires collective. Her work focuses on the conditions of postcoloniality in art and culture in Belgium. In 2023 she wrote a thesis entitled “Epreuves de colonialité dans l’art et la culture. Faire exister un monde noir à Bruxelles”.
Hicham Khalidi is currently the director of Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He was associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations (Galeries Lafayette corporate foundation) in Paris and has been involved in commissioning works in the fields of fine art, design and fashion. He will be curating the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, working with artist Renzo Martens and the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise.
Anne Wetsi Mpoma is a Brussels-based arts and culture activist and researcher, exploring strategies of resistance towards a more consistent society in terms of social, racial and environmental justice. She founded the Wetsi Art Gallery, an independent space that showcases the work of artists marginalised on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and/or disability.
Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (born in Sables d’Olonne, France, in 1983) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brussels, Paris and Casablanca. He works with installation, sculpture, photography and performance art. At CENTRALE, the artist continues to explore the representation of violence and its consequences on current geopolitical issues. He draws on war archives and ancestral history, as well as on his own experiences, both intimate and fictional.
Candice Breitz (born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1972) is a Berlin-based artist whose moving image installations have been shown internationally. Born and raised in South Africa during the era of apartheid, Breitz has consistently sought to grapple with the condition of whiteness in her work, from early photographic series such as the Ghost Series (1994), to later installations such as Extra (2011) and Whiteface (2022). Breitz’s journeys into the violent terrain of whiteness often feature the artist herself and are strikingly auto ethnographic.
Ph : Hugard & Vanoverschelde
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