200 regards sur l’immigration looks back at the museum’s collection, with a display led by the poignant and poetic writing of the author of Mauritian origin Nathacha Appanah. Three times, the country we leave behind, the erasure of identity upon arrival, and the question of memory: past – present – ??future. We often find trace objects, which are as many entries for oral and written testimonies. La Tête en mie de pain, fragment de vie passé, is an opportunity to evoke Frida Rochocz’s flight from the authoritarian Argentinian power, while Kwassas kwassas, an immense boat from the Comoros and used for crossings to Mayotte, delivers four stories of documented and photographed migrants. In the painting Sea, Land and Language by Agnès Thurnauer, which belongs to a series inspired by the migration crises of our time, we can sense an interweaving of united bodies, of women and men caught in the waves, the land, but also the barbed wire – like the symbol of a hostile border. The bodies merge with the words that cover the canvas. A complex alliance between language and image, characteristic of the artist’s work. Has language become the only country of exiles? Assaf Shoshan, for his part, offers a series of diptych photographs, using undocumented workers as models. He then wonders how to photograph people who are hiding. This is also the challenge of an exhibition that tracks down the invisible in order to show and denounce it.

Excerpt from the article by Gae Blu Infuso published in N°112 of the magazine Art Absolument. Published on January 15, 2025

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