Pavilion presents two films by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc that reflect on colonialism, cultural heritage and identity. Both films respond to the collective forgetting of colonial histories and address the way in which cultural objects carry memories of past violences.
Abonnenc’s most recent project, Sector IX B is a fictional film about a young female anthropologist conducting archival research into the ambitious Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic mission of the 30s. In an attempt to reach a closer subjective understanding of the artefacts and documents before her, the woman experiments with the same medication prescribed to the expedition party.
In An Italian Film (Africa Addio), commissioned in 2012 by Pavilion, Abonnenc confronts the violence and brutality of the exploitation of copper by colonial powers in the Katanga region of Congo. Over several centuries Katanga copper crosses were used in Congo as a means of payment and exchange and were looted in the 19th Century to fund western industrialisation.The film documents the smelting and re-casting of Katanga Crosses in a foundry just outside Leeds.
The screenings will be followed by a Skype Q & A with the artist.