Luis Carlos Tovar,winner of the 3rd edition of the Prix Elysée,with the support of Parmigiani Fleurier

Elysée Lausanne

2/14Press release 22.06.19Prix Elysée Elysée Lausanne 2/3

The Musée de l’Elysée is pleased to announce the winner of the 3rd edition of the Prix Elysée: the Colombian photographer Luis Carlos Tovar. Chosen by an international jury of experts among eight nominees, his identity was revealed to the public during the Nuit des images, Saturday, June 22, 2019. Luis Carlos Tovar’s work aims at "revealing/unveiling how memory takes shape" and more precisely how "overlaying personal and historical memory gave [him] the opportunity to re-think the ecology and metabolism of photographs."

The Musée de l’Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier would like to congratulate Luis Carlos Tovar, the Colombian photographer born in Bogotà (Colombia) in 1978, winner of the third edition of the Prix Elysée, for his project entitled My Father’s Garden. The starting point for Luis Carlos Tovar’s work is a photograph, but, paradoxically, one that he has never seen. It is the “proof of life” of his father, taken hostage by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in Columbia. Tovar has other traces to fill his father’s silences – the titles of the books he read in the jungle, the turquoise butterflies he kept between the books’ pages, and the Amazon landscapes he tries to recreate in his garden. These enable him to imagine his father’s pain, but never to fully understand it.

Luis Carlos Tovar speaks about his project"The starting point for this project is a photograph that reveals my father’s survival during his abduction by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 1980. The photograph, a Polaroid hidden among the small myths of my family history, is unknown to me. Its existence is a rumor, a depiction from my sister’s memory, the only person who has seen the image, which is jealously guarded by my father among his most hidden and personal files.The day he was stripped of his freedom, my father held me in his arms. He says that during his kidnapping, nineteen guerrillas attempted to indoctrinate him by means of three books: Karl Marx’s Capital, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara and Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? My father’s salvation was laughter and the bold statement that, if he were to die, he would do so with the satisfaction of having lived a full life. A while later, having read the indoctrinating books, my father tried to strike up a dialogue. This initiative revealed that none of the guerrillas guarding him could read.Because the son in his arms was so small and the memory of his features so blurred, my father invented a way of remembering: he hunted turquoise butterflies (Morpho amathonte), preserving them between the page of the books. Chasing butterflies became a metaphor for his struggle for freedom.

Cover: © Luis Carlos Tovar, My Father’s Garden, 2019 / Prix Elysée Above: © Luis Carlos Tovar, My Father’s Garden, 2019 / Prix ElyséeLuis Carlos Tovar, 2018 © Mathilda Olmi

3/14Press release 22.06.19Prix Elysée Elysée Lausanne 3/3

© Luis Carlos Tovar, My Father’s Garden, 2019 / Prix Elysée © Luis Carlos Tovar, My Father’s Garden, 2019 / Prix Elysée

While he was held hostage, my father was taken through stretches of the Amazon and saw landscapes he had never seen before. He contemplated the jungle and when he was finally freed, he began to inhabit places surrounded by plants. Since then, he has been seeking to recreate nature in his new home in the city far from the town of his childhood. The pain of others is always abstract and indistinct. Our perception of it is extremely elusive. We can imagine it but never fully understand it, never truly inhabit it. This impossibility is symbolized in two ways: my father adamantly refuses to show me the photograph and my work on it begins without ever having seen it."

Luis Carlos Tovar’s backgroundLuis Carlos Tovar is a visual artist and educator who lives and works in Paris. He considers art as a vessel for reflection, a catalyst for building resilience, and an agent for inner and outer transformation.Tovar explores mutable geographies (i.e. displacement), how otherness is created, and the role of memory in the present. He has worked with vulnerable populations in his country and with refugees in Europe. Committed to social justice, he has developed decentralized pedagogical spaces, where participants inhabit their individual and collective journeys. His work integrates different mediums such as photography, painting, mixed media and video installation. He has exhibited in Buenos Aires, Bogotà, Rome, Paris, Madrid and Pingyao. He won the PhotoEspaña Discovery Prize (Madrid) in 2017, completed a residency at the Musée du quai Branly (2017-18) and another at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2018-19).

The jury of the third editionThe jury was composed of Anahita Ghabaian Etehadieh, Founder and Director of the Silk Road Gallery (Tehran), Curt Holtz, Editor of Prestel Publishing (Munich), Yasufumi Nakamori, Chief Curator of international art (photography) at the Tate Modern (London), agnès b, Fashion designer, Galery owner and Collector (Paris) and the founding partners Tatyana Franck, Director of the Musée de l’Elysée and Michel Parmigiani, Founder of Parmigiani Fleurier (Fleurier). The jury also acknowledges the seven nominees, Laia Abril, Mathieu Asselin, Claude Baechtold, Nicola Lo CalzoAlexandra Catiere, Alinka Echevarría and Gregory Halpern for their invaluable contributions, particularly within the framework of the Nominees’ Book.

Launched in 2014, the Prix Elysée is a prize supporting artistic production in the field of photography. Result of a partnership between the Musée de l’Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier, it offers financial help and curatorial guidance to artists with a passion for photography and books, so they can take a decisive step in their career.

www.prixelysee.ch

My father’s garden (proof of life)

Luis Carlos Tovar

The starting point for this project is a photograph that reveals my father’s survival during his abduction by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in 1980. The photograph, a Polaroid hidden among the small myths of my family history, is (an object) unknown to me. Its existence is a rumor, a depiction from my sister’s memory, the only person who has seen the image, which is jealously guarded by my father among his most hidden and personal files.My sister saw the image in 1989.

The day he was stripped of his freedom, my father celebrated his brother Luis Carlos’s birthday, and held me in his arms. However, the captors, were looking for my uncle, whom my father decided to supplant. The impersonation was motivated by the certainty that, if my uncle, a military, was captured, he would be murdered.

My father says that during the months of his kidnapping, nineteen guerrillas attempted to indoctrinate him, through three books: Karl Marx’s The Capital, Che’s diary in Bolivia, Che Guevara’s and What to do? by Lenine. The guerrillas narrated their guilts in their sleep, and my father’s salvation was the laughter and the bold statement that if he parted, he would do so with the satisfaction of having lived a full life.

Having read the books of indoctrination, my father tried to strike dialogue. This initiative revealed that most of the guerrillas who guarded him couldn’t read.

Because the son in his arms was so small and the memory of his features was blurry, my father invented a way of remembering: he hunted butterflies, preserving them among the leaves of the books. Butterflies chasing as a metaphor of his struggle for freedom.

During his kidnapping, my father toured Amazonian stretches and witnessed landscapes never before traveled. The jungle has been his house for a few months, that he describes as a house where the sun never rises ; blue and deep. When he was freed and moved to another city, he began to inhabit his new spaces through the obsessive act of being surrounded by plants, seeking to recreate his childhood garden.

The pain of others always comes to us in an abstract and blurred way. We can intuit it in a very elusive way. We can also imagine it, but never fully understand it, never truly inhabit it. This impossibility is symbolized in two ways: my father has been adamantly reluctant to grant the photograph, and my work on it begins without having ever seen it.

Julian Herbet, in his poem Silencio: “There is silence between a father and son when the father can not explain his life, although it is the source of misunderstanding”

Le jardin de mon père(preuve de vie)

Luis Carlos Tovar

Le point de départ de cette réflexion est une photographie de mon père envoyée comme preuve de vie après son enlèvement en 1980 par les Forces Armées Révolutionnaires de Colombie (FARC). Cette photographie, un Polaroïd dissimulé dans les petits mythes de mon histoire familiale, est un objet qui m’est inconnu. Son existence est une rumeur, enfouie dans les souvenirs de ma sœur, la seule à avoir vu l’image, jalousement cachée par mon père dans ses archives les plus intimes et les plus secrètes. Ma sœur a vu cette image en 1989.

Le jour où il a été privé de sa liberté, mon père célébrait l’anniversaire de son frère, Luis Carlos, et me tenait dans ses bras. Ses ravisseurs étaient à la recherche de mon oncle, mais mon père a choisi de prendre sa place. Sa décision de se supplanter à son frère a été motivée par la certitude que, si mon oncle, militaire, était capturé, il serait immanquablement assassiné.

Mon père raconte que, durant les mois de sa séquestration, dix-neuf guérilleros ont essayé de l’endoctriner à travers la lecture de trois livres : Le Capital de Karl Marx, Journal de Bolivie, du Che Guevara, et Que faire ? de Lénine. Les guérilleros racontaient leurs exactions dans leur sommeil, et la réaction de mon père était le rire et l’audace d’affirmer que, s’il devait finir ainsi, il s’en irait avec la satisfaction d’une vie accomplie.

Après avoir lu les livres d’endoctrinement, mon père a essayé d’instaurer un dialogue avec ses ravisseurs. Son initiative lui permit de comprendre que la majorité des guérilleros qui le surveillaient ne savaient pas lire.

Parce que le fils qu’il tenait dans ses bras au moment de son enlèvement était si petit et que ses traits étaient encore imprécis, mon père inventa une autre manière de se souvenir : il chassait des papillons et les conservait entre les pages des livres. Ces papillons sont la métaphore de son combat pour la liberté.

Durant sa captivité, mon père a parcouru les étendues du territoire amazonien, et découvert des paysages qui lui étaient inconnus. La jungle a été sa maison pour quelques mois, qu’il décrit comme une maison où le jour ne se lève jamais ; bleue et profonde. Après avoir retrouvé sa liberté et changé de ville, il a commencé à habiter ses nouveaux espaces à travers l’acte obsessif de s’entourer de plantes, cherchant à recréer le jardin de son enfance.

La douleur de l’autre nous touche toujours de manière abstraite et trouble. Nous pouvons la deviner mais elle reste insaisissable. Nous pouvons l’imaginer, peut-être, mais jamais la comprendre entièrement, jamais l’habiter réellement. Cette impossibilité est symbolisée ici à travers deux faits : que mon père se soit montré si réticent à partager cette photographie et que mon travail sur elle se soit engagé sans jamais l’avoir vue.

Comme le dit Julian Herbert dans son poème Silencio : « Il y a du silence entre un père et son fils lorsqu’un père ne peut pas expliquer sa vie, même si c’est une source d’incompréhension »