MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain: In Praise of the Missing Image

Curator: Marie-Ann Yemsi

Artists: Raphaël Barontini, Gabrielle Goliath, Caroline Mauxion

In a world saturated with images, some, strangely, are lacking. This edition of MOMENTA seeks to situate these lacunae in a historical perspective. Ever since the invention of photography and film, and their proliferation during the colonial expansion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an ideological link was formed between these media and the construction of dominant narratives. This connection has been particularly evident in the production of figures of alterity­­—geographic, cultural, racial, economic—and in certain resulting historical blind spots. Narratives that fell outside this frame were swept away, and these stories have been either truncated or simply disappeared. With a focus on what is beyond our view—the silences and breaches in individual and collective memory—In Praise of the Missing Image will explore both contemporary challenges in relation to the image and the current consequences of the complex dynamics involved in constructing narratives. Which stories are told, how, and by whom?