M’ TSAMBORO LAURA HENNO · of fiction and storytelling. The resulting images provoke a...

Press requests : [email protected], rue des Filles-du-Calvaire 75003 Paris

01 42 74 47 05 / www.fillesducalvaire.com / [email protected]

Exhibition from 26 October to 24 November 2018Opening Thursday 25 October from 6.30 pm to 9 pm

M’ TSAMBOROLAURA HENNO

PRESS KIT

As a continuation of her projects created in Réunion, in

2009 Laura Henno began working in the neighbouring

archipelago of the Comoros, the regional epicentre of

migration and its related repercussions. Although until

then she had focused on the representation of young

people implicated in “marronage,” referring to the act

of runaway slaves escaping from slavery, which is

now again used to describe the fleeing strategies of

migrants, here she looks at the landscape of migration

and the lives of people smugglers. M’Tsamboro, the

title of the new exhibition at the Galerie filles du

calvaire, thus refers to a small uninhabited islet of the

Comoros archipelago where unscrupulous people

smugglers leave migrants they have tricked and who

were hoping to arrive in Mayotte. This insular trap then

becomes the place of the first disillusions for these

exiled natives of the Comoros, obliged to hide from

the border police and their dogs. Through several new

pieces and the film Koropa, which has received many prizes, M’Tsamboro

multiplies the perspectives on this territory full of contrasts, both illusory and

very real, rendered in a poetic realism, but never idealised.

The M’Tsamboro installation, a triptych projected onto a single screen, places

the visitor in front of the intersecting destinies of several children from the

same family, who the artist has been following for four years, all of whom

have trained to be people smugglers. At the helm of their small boats, they

are brought back to a childlike innocence (noticeable by the decalomania of

one, the satchel of another, and their pink customised paddles), which they

nevertheless are on the way to losing. Frozen in a heroic posture (Eli backlit

and bathed in a halo of light) or, on the contrary, confronted by the harsh

realities of the job (Nasser ill, Mokatir with swollen feet), they embody the tragic

condition of a humanity adrift, exposed to all risks and dangers. Placed in the

opposite direction to the boat’s trajectory, in silence, the spectator witnesses

the infinite wandering of these young driver-guides who seem to constantly

return to their departure point. Freed from the narrative form, Laura Henno’s

M’TSAMBOROLAURA HENNO

The Galerie filles du calvaire has the pleasure of announcing the solo exhibition of Laura Henno, M’Tsamboro. After her exhibition, which attracted attention, at the latest edition of the Rencontres d’Arles, she is presenting at the gallery all her work produced in the Comoros.

17, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire 75003 Paris01 42 74 47 05 / www.fillesducalvaire.com / [email protected]

Exhibition from 26 October to 24 November 2018Opening Thursday 25 October from 6.30 pm to 9 pm

In front page :Série Djo, Mayotte, 2017Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire

Série Les Pilotes, Comores, 2016 - 2017Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire

Série Ge ouryao! Pourquoi t’as peur!, Mayotte, 2018Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire


images here lend themselves with even greater

ease to a game of interpretations: the children may

be training or playing the role of prisoners unable to

escape from the island, the doubt in their eyes recalls

unattainable horizons, here symbolised by the islet

of M’Tsamboro, which appears in the background,

floating and unstable. This piece can be appreciated in

direct continuity with the film Koropa, which depicted

the passing on of people smuggling work between Ben and twelve-year-old

Patron, whose point of view the current work adopts. Although the terse form

sets up a certain distance, the frontal framing openly conveys the violence of

the situation, that of a child who is made to grow up too fast and to take illegal

routes where he risks his life.

The yells and whistles that resonate throughout the exhibition arise from the film

Djo, which tackles the marronage question by focusing on the figure of the dog.

Originally imported by Westerners to chase the “maroons” (runaway slaves),

now used by the police to hunt down migrants, the animal was notably

adopted by the people of Mayotte to protect their lands. The film takes the

form of a timeless fable, in which Smogi recounts the story of Djo, the shepherd

of the mangroves who he rescued and took in, before returning to the hills of

Koropa (film), 2016 Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire et Spectre Productions


Série Djo, Mayotte, 2017Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire

Mayotte, only coming down again for the rainy season.

Through these demonstrations of freedom, of which

the entire work constitutes a vibrant plea for an animist

vision, where dog and man would be equal, Laura

Henno revitalises the beliefs of the Comoros people in

an invisible world, within a culture where resorting to

magic softens the grimness of reality.

The exhibition is complemented by photographs

taken at the same time as the films were shot, as

well as a new installation, for which Henno followed a group of young,

undocumented Mayotte and Comoros natives, entitled Ge ouryao! (Why

Are You Afraid!), a current interjection, which has become a leitmotiv in

the dialogue between the artist and her subjects). These contemporary

maroons, living in a group in a banga, an improvised shack built on the

beach, also form a community with their dogs, which act as pets, a

means of defence and attack weapons. Deconstructed and distributed

around the gallery space, the installation reproduces the form of a

shattered geography that reflects the lives adrift within its confines: at

the crossroads of territories, the image conveys the way these lives are

relegated to the periphery of society, the edges of the city or to the island’s

shores. This marginal space, the site of forced clandestine behaviour and

circumstances, has by this fact become the centre of an active resistance,

of which the latest revolts on the island of Mayotte are the raw expression.

With M’Tsamboro, Henno nourishes a mysterious imaginative work like a

place of release, for a poetic exile. Without preaching or taking a militant

position, with this exhibition Laura Henno opens up a space of reflection,

projection and escape, where fiction facilitates an access to reality.

Children’s dreams, local beliefs and migrants’ life stories and fantasies in

fact constitute so many narrative constructions through which spectators

are made aware of concrete situations and can then form their own

judgements and vision of the wandering man at a time of globalised

migrations.

Florian Gaité

Translated by Sandra Reid

This exhibition is produced with the warm collaboration of Nathalie Gonthier and

the support of the BBB Centre d’Art (Toulouse) and Fondation Carasso.


LAURA HENNOBorn in 1976 in Croix, France

Lives and works in Paris, France

Laura Henno initially trained as a photographer and

studied film at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts

Contemporains. She was the recipient of the New

Discovery Award at the Rencontres Internationales de

la Photographie d’Arles in 2007. For several years, she

has based her approach to photography and film on

the issues of clandestine migration, in the Comoros, Réunion Island and Calais. She

confronts herself, with a documentary aim that reinvests reality with the potentials

of fiction and storytelling. The resulting images provoke a disturbance and draw

from pictorial and cinematographic codes.

Her work has been shown in many museums in France and abroad. In 2018, she

presented her series Redemption (produced in the United States) at the Rencontres

d’Arles. In 2017, the BBB Centre d’Art in Toulouse cast the spotlight on her series

M’Tsamboro. In 2013, her work was shown in the Missing Stories exhibition at the

Centre régional de la photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais in Douchy-les-Mines and the

Dunkirk Museum of Fine Arts. In 2011, she was exhibited in the Finnish Museum of

Photography in Helsinki, Finland. Laura Henno has also participated in many group

exhibitions, among which Paysage Français : Une Aventure Photographique (1984-

2017) at the BnF François Mitterrand in 2017, alongside a hundred major photographers,

the Sharjah Biennial 2017 at the Beirut Art Center in Lebanon, L’effet Vertigo at MAC

VAL in Vitry-sur-Seine in 2015, Femina, ou la réappropriation des modèles at the

Pavillon Vendôme in Clichy in 2015, and Voices of the Sea at the Calais Museum of

Fine Arts in 2012. She has been awarded several prices for her film Koropa, including

the Equality and Diversity Award 2017 at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short

Film Festival and the Grand Prix for Short Film 2016 at the Entrevues de Belfort.

KOROPA (Movie, 2016) / AWARDS

Festival Angers Premiers Plans 2016Prix des bibliothécaires

Entrevues de Belfort 2016Grand Prix du court-métrage & Prix Camira pour le court-métrage

Festival International du court-métrage de Clermont-Ferrand 2017Prix Égalité Diversité

Beijing International Short Film Festival, Chine 2017Oustanding Achievement Award

Les Écrans documentaires, Arcueil 2017Mention spéciale du jury

5° Internacional Festival Signos de la NoiteLisboa 2017SIGNS AWARD for documentaries

Festival de Cinéma Européen des Arcs 2017Mention Spéciale

© Iris Lou

IMAGES AVAILABLE

Série Djo, Mayotte, 2017Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire


Koropa (film), 2016 Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire et Spectre Productions

Série Les Pilotes, Comores, 2016 - 2017Courtesy Galerie Les filles du calvaire


Press requests : [email protected], rue des Filles-du-Calvaire 75003 Paris

01 42 74 47 05 / www.fillesducalvaire.com / [email protected]

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