Africa is understandable also through its minorities, its "margins". Contemporary artists invite us to change your perception, to "re-learn" to see the daily reality that some media contributed to hide from us or to present as "clichés".

African contemporary art thus plays the role of a revealing: it gives life, form, word and dignity to the people made invisible who inhabit the Continent.
Modest everyday people, informal sector workers, disabled persons, prostitutes, homosexuals, street children, all those who never make the cover of "moving forward" Africa.

Visible and invisible: what is there, in the shadow, not really hidden but not much considered, not much convened. The artist as a seer, the one who looks and makes us look.
The representation of the disabled in Africa by Malik Njemi, grandmothers playing football from Orange Farm Township by Andrew Esiebo, women accused of sorcery and banned from their village then revealed by Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo, prostitutes from Addis Abeba by Michael Tsebaye, imprisoned then liberated female bodies by Tunisian photographer Mouna Karray, Felix, the South-African anonymous militant by William Kentridge… All these portraits question the spectator.

"You are the only one seeing us, because nobody cares about us", is said to Burkinabe photographer Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo. Facing the institutional operators, many artists and citizens form autonomous networks connected to a renowned professional activity, as waste sorters, musicians, informal shopkeepers… These networks develop their own alternative codes to dominant ones.

Especially made for this exhibition, these works and installations echoe Fondation Blachere's principles, launched 10 years ago: to shown Africa and its artists in a resolutely contemporary way, without any fatalism or do-gooding.

PHOTOGRAPHERS Sammy Baloji (République Démocratique du Congo), Jodi Bieber (Afrique du Sud), Andrew Esiebo (Nigéria), Mouna Karray (Tunisie), Nadja Makhlouf (France/Algérie), Malik Njemi (France), Nyaba Léon Ouédraogo (Burkina-Faso), Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopie).

PAINTERS Dawit Abebe (Ethiopie), Deborah Bell (Afrique du Sud), William Kentridge (Afrique du Sud), Ransome Stanley (Allemagne/Nigéria).

SCULPTORS / VIDEOMAKERS Clay Apenouvon (Togo), Berry Bickle (Zimbabwe), Alex Burke (France), Nadja Makhlouf, Nyaba Léon Ouédraogo.

Curator / Olivier Sultan
Communication / Art-Z - Anna Gianotti
00 33(0)627 222 253 / annaglaban@yahoo.fr
Scenography / François Viol