Official book of the Guy Tillim – Museum of the Revolution exhibition, being shown at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, from February 26th to June 2nd, 2019.
« Guy Tillim considers urban space as a place of inscription, bearing the traces of colonial history where new political orientations take root. Tillim is part of the post-David Goldblatt generation that had a profound impact on the South African photographic scene in the 1990s and 2000s. »
Clément Chéroux
Award winner of the 2017 HCB Award, on June 20, following the deliberations held at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, the jury of the 2017 HCB Award selected him for his Museum of the Revolution project.
The series takes its title from the Museum of the Revolution on the Avenida 24 Julho, in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. The avenue was named soon after the establishment of Lourenço Marques as the Portuguese colonial capital. The 24th of July 1875 marked the end of a Luso-British conflict for possession of the territory that was decided in favour of Portugal.
One hundred years later the name of the avenue remained the same, but its meaning changed. Mozambique’s independence from Portugal was proclaimed on June 25, 1975; the capital was renamed Maputo, and now the 24th of July is Nationalisation Day, celebrating the transfer of ownership of all Portuguese property and buildings to the state. A 15-year civil
war followed, ending in 1992. The People’s Republic of Mozambique became the Republic of Mozambique and a new era began.
In the Museum of the Revolution there is a panoramic painting produced by North Korean artists depicting the liberation of the capital from Portuguese colonial rule. It illustrates the rhetoric of a revolution as the leader and followers parade through the streets and avenues, laid out with grandeur by the colonial powers. These streets, named and renamed, function as silent witnesses to the ebb and flow of political, economic and social shifts of power and have become a museum of the two major revolutions that have taken place in African countries over the past 65 years: from colonial to postcolonial regimes that in many cases embraced socialist policies, and then from African Nationalist to global capitalist states.
Photographs
by Guy Tillim
Writings
Foreword extracted of Achille Mbembe’s Out of the dark night
Texts by Guy Tillim
28 x 26 cm
65 photographs
L’ouvrage contient les textes en versions française et anglaise / The book contains both French and English versions of the texts
Shipments to Europe only.
