Artist Talk: Mathieu K Abonnenc

Across film, sculpture, photography, drawing, and sound Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc recovers, reclaims, and represents histories of colonisation and decolonisation.

 

The absence of material and cultural traces that are inherent to marginalised histories of oppression often form the starting points in Abonnenc’s work. Examples of this are Foreword to Guns for Banta, 2011 (a foreword to the 1970 film, shot on the Lusophone liberation struggle and never completed) or Songs for a Mad King, 2013 (the performance of three of Julius Eastman’s musical scores that were recollected by the american composer Mary-Jane leach after his passing).

 

In evoking the works of other and often emblematic artists and thinkers, such as film-maker Sarah Maldoror, composer Julius Eastman, Guyanese writer Wilson Harris, or Frantz Fanon, Abonnenc ushers revolutionary decolonial moments and acts into our present. In doing this he also explores the dilemma at the heart of the postcolonial experience, where the emancipation from oppression and the construction of postcolonial identity meet.

 

Understanding (mis)representations of history and lapses in our collective memory as an inheritance we are all to grapple with, Abonnenc’s works are both commemorative gestures and a reconstitutional effort against the amnesia that surrounds marginalised histories.

 

This talk is part of our Memorial Gestures Programme, a platform supporting artistic research into the Holocaust Centre North Archive. Our artist talks feature artists engaging with archives, memory studies, and the representation of (marginalised) histories. Their aim is to contextualise Holocaust memory, materials, and creative responses within contemporary critical and sociopolitical frameworks.