Forms across the Global Village. Exposures and Exhibition

For and From Makwacha (Democratic Republic of Congo)

French Institute Seminars in Humanities (FISH)
05 October 2015

11:00 – IFAS Conference Room, 62 Juta Street, Braamfontein

Manon Denoun
Sciences Po Bordeaux

Makwacha’s case-study and the related practice of kushingula conveys key elements to understand contemporary communication stakes and informs me to call for sensual contextualization. In 2004, as he was riding back to Lubumbashi (DRC), the director of the French Cultural Center observed painted houses along the route. He ultimately stopped in the village of Makwacha. The village’s traditional painting practice has ever since lured artists, journalists, tourist activity and NGOs to Makwacha – resulting in a 2014 exhibition in Paris. Based on fieldwork observations from 2013 to 2015, this talk discusses the curator’s conceptual choice for the exhibition (‘Makwacha’, La Maison des Metallos, Paris, April 2014). As TICS have been remodeling representation of what used to be ‘far away’ countries, Modest Art mouvement raises ethical and epistemological issues which I’ll examine in order to develop the concept of sensual contextualization.

Working on art and literature, Manon Denoun has embarked on a PhD at l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) to understand contemporary practices of kushigula in villages of the Copperbelt of Africa. Her research focuses on processes of representation at the age of Globalization.