11 rue des Beaux Arts 75006
tuesday-saturday 11am-1pm & 2pm-7pm
01 40 51 57 88 @crousparis_galerie cnap.fr
Laura Ben Hayoun Stepanian, Lotfi Benyelles, Michel Slomka
...toutes les histoires possibles...
For the second time, following the Lire les lignes du monde exhibition in 2023, the Centre national des arts plastiques partners with PhotoSaintGermain for a group show at the Galerie du Crous of Paris.
Here, projects by Laura Ben Hayoun Stepanian, Lotfi Benyelles and Michel Slomka are brought together around the theme of memory. Drawing parallels between historiography and photography, these artists investigate important moments and places in world history: the Armenian genocide and its traces today with Laura Ben Hayoun Stepanian, the concentration camps and their memory still buried and re-examined with Michel Slomka, the history of the lives and forms of a city marked by the processes of colonization and decolonization with Lotfi Benyelles.
Through their investigative methodologies, and by relying on human and social sciences, they invent new ways of using photography as the material for an untold history, revealed by the examination of facts and micro-events sometimes invisible and ignored until now.
Their projects have benefited from Cnap support for documentary photography.
Laura Ben Hayoun Stepanian Teach me how to sew/saw (2019-in progress)
"Teach me how to sew/saw is set between France and Armenia. I follow the ambiguous threads woven between diaspora and independent Armenia. A large part of the Armenian diaspora arrived in Europe following the genocide of 1915. Coming from territories now located in Turkey, many do not recognize themselves in present-day Armenia. I question these identities throughout the history of the Armenian diaspora. The symbols that recur in carpets and tattoos (the pomegranate, Armenian words) are hymns to fertility and prosperity. I soon wanted to question them alongside other young women. Carpets are also territories. During this long-term project, Armenia has experienced tremendous upheavals: a revolution in 2018, then war with Azerbaijan. The journey begins in the knitting factory where my Armenian grand-aunts worked in Valence (France) and takes me to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, mixing my voice with those of other Armenian women. Here, intimate family stories mingle with those of a country caught up in geopolitical and religious turmoil, from the 20th century to the present day. The ensemble unfolds like a choir, multiplying Armenian and diasporic identities."
-Laura Ben Hayoun Stepanian
Photographs, videos, texts, rugs.
Lotfi Benyelles Alger, trames et territoire
Lotfi Benyelles' work questions the discomfort and disruption of intimate spaces experienced by modern city dwellers. It originated in his childhood bedroom in Algiers, overlooking the esplanade from which De Gaulle delivered his famous “ I have understood you ” speech. Originally built as a living room, the room had become a shared space after independence: a children's room at night that had to be redesigned as a reception room during the day.
Later, an image caught his eye: the inhabitants of the slums emerging from the ravines of Algiers, taking the dirt paths that their repeated journeys trace along the roadsides.
As an adult, he turned to photography and decided to work on the territorial expansion of his native city. He explores the urban, social and family dynamics that shape the city of Algiers. At the crossroads of public and private spaces, he focuses on the urban rituals of the inhabitants. These moments, often seemingly ordinary, are imbued with social and memorial meanings that forge the city's identity. His work also sheds light on the complex relationship between individuals and their built environment. By documenting the transformation of habitats and neighborhoods, and examining the historical evolution of slums as part of the ongoing urbanization of Algiers, Lotfi Benyelles paints a nuanced portrait of a rapidly expanding metropolis.
Michel Slomka BIRKENAU
une écologie de la mémoire
It's a place to which we always return, but never reach. The testimonies of survivors, the trials of executioners and the work of historians have said almost everything about Auschwitz-Birkenau. And yet, the unfathomable part of it remains, haunting our consciences and requiring us to question it over and over again. The direct witnesses of the events will soon be no more: it is up to us today, 80 years after the liberation of the camp, to carry on a memory in motion, alert and alive.
Intranquile.
Birkenau is alive. Neither a museum nor a cemetery, the former camp remains the site of an unheard-of massacre, evolving under the effects of the elements, time and seasons into new forms to which we must pay attention. Thus, in the areas devoid of vestiges from the early days of extermination, emptiness and obliteration are only an appearance. The woods and those who inhabit them - trees, animals or mushrooms - preserve the trace of the disappeared and the topography of the crime.
They are tiny, fragmentary witnesses. But they are a reminder that memory is an organic process, living and transmitting itself in complex ecologies where humans and non-humans weave shared histories amid the ruins.
The pitfall of disappearance is removed, for nothing ever disappears. The past continues to incarnate itself at every moment of the present in a multitude of forms. It's up to us to follow its metamorphoses and never stop telling its story.
La Galerie du Crous de Paris
Dedicated to emerging artists, Galerie du Crous in Paris offers young artists the opportunity to be confronted to the critical and public eye by hosting twenty individual or group exhibitions each year.