When explaining the primary reason, that is to say the very origin of the exhibition, Sana Ginwala pulls from an envelope a photograph dated from the end of the 1980s. image of my uncle Mohammed, which was taken in the shop (PAZA Trading) he had just opened. This photo is important to me. Thanks to him and the business he started, my family migrated from India to Zambia before I was born. This cliché is therefore doubly founding.
Sana Ginwala, a Zambian curator and artist of Indian origin, is in search of her identity in the most innocuous images. Today they also concern her own existence as well as those of the community in which she lives… while being identified as a foreigner. “Belonging (belonging, in English).
The exhibition « Exploring Identity through photographs from the past » therefore serves as a gateway. “Through photography, I was able to understand my identity, my family lineage and our migrations from Myanmar to India and Zambia. My intention with Zambia Belonging as a project is to facilitate this for other people as well. “, she explains.
The choice of the place of exhibition is not insignificant either. It was a necessity for this one to be held in the national museum of Lusaka, and to put in dialogue the great history of Zambia and the personal trajectories. At the same time, “Belonging” makes it possible to rethink the notion of the archive, even that of the museum. “Most of the public came for the first time to this place of collective memory. The exhibition, under this “personal” aspect, allows some to “reclaim” their own archives, in their own homes and thus reactivate dialogues with the elderly who are living libraries.
This is an aspect on which Sana Ginwala also dwells: “How to archive feelings, emotions, experiences, by absorbing the past into the present through photography? By decentralizing the history of Lusaka and Zambia, while opening the possibility of reading other stories of simple friendships, stories of citizens in a new light. This time, the citizen is no longer a spectator, but a determining actor in this History.
“This is an image of my uncle Mohammed, which was taken in the shop (PAZA Trading) he had just opened. This photo is important to me. Thanks to him and the business he started, my family migrated from India to Zambia before I was born. » Sana Ginwala
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Zambia Belonging, nov-décembre 2021, au Musée national de Lusaka et 6 au 12 décembre, à l’East Park Mall, Lusaka (Zambie).
Stéphane Kabila Kyowa
stephanekabilakyowa@gmail.com
Photos : DR, Sana Ginwala.
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