Les sœurs Chevalme / Mama Whita – Série à la française

The drawing work by the Chevalme sisters tackles the topicality of history, the complex relationship we have with the colonial past. Using photographs of everyday scenes taken by colonialists in Africa at the end of the 19th century, the sisters reveal the unthinking nature of these images. By faithfully reproducing these ordinary photographs in Indian ink, bearing witness to the subjugation of peoples by a conquering Europe, they question the power of the image in our contemporary societies and the way in which a banal scene in the 19th century is revealed a century later to be totally unbearable. But to avoid denouncing them too quickly and easily, they superimpose a second drawing, this time made with gold flakes. This second drawing shows fragments of everyday life in Africa today, with street vendors, young adults on scooters, women leaving for the market... This tension between the past and the present in cultures that are open to the world raises questions about how each culture can overcome the weight of its past to project itself into a promising future. This pair's extraordinary mastery of line produces works of rare relevance to the question of how we look at other cultures. About ten creations are available for sale at a price of €2,500 each.