Laura Henno - M'Tsamboro - FRAC Auvergne

From 29 June to 3 November, Frac Auvergne presents a major exhibition dedicated to the photographer and film-maker Laura Henno.

 

For almost fifteen years, Laura Henno has been setting out to meet communities living on the margins of society. In 2013, she embarked on a vast project in the heart of the Comoros archipelago, immersing herself for several weeks a year in this geopolitically complex territory. To faithfully tell the story of these invisible populations, the artist is taking a long, empirical and deeply sensitive approach. Avoiding clichés, she allows herself to be guided by the encounters that drive her desire for images. As a result, her body of work develops patiently, one encounter leading to another, one territory to another, gradually sketching out a history of the margins in which existences are revealed to be linked by a web of societal, political and historical issues.

 

The exhibition at Frac Auvergne brings together for the first time a significant part of the work produced in recent years in the Comoros and Mayotte. It features major photographic series and several films, including Djo, produced in 2019, and the video triptych Ge Ouryao ! Pourquoi t'as peur! made from hundreds of hours of rushes that the artist shot during her years of immersion in Mayotte.  In this way, Laura Henno constructs a story without words. This silence is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful responses to the noisy echoes of a world that seems to have forgotten the notion of nuance. This notion never leaves the artist to shape, far from any self-indulgent or stigmatising discourse, a narrative of the margins that she takes care to write with and from those who live it.

Laure Forlay, exhibition curator