Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

In the context of its exhibition Style Congo. Heritage & Heresy, CIVA is pleased to host a screening, book presentation and conversation with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. Her new book, La Résistance des Bijoux. Contre les géographies coloniales (Editions Rot-Bo-Krik, 2023), along with her two films in the Unlearning Imperial Plunder series, addresses the objects, skills and bodies of knowledge that were stolen during the massive colonial looting of Africa and are now held captive in museums and archives outside the territories from where they were taken.

The first film, "Un-Documented" (2019), which was partly shot at the Tervuren Museum, explores the connections between the looted objects and the pleas of asylum seekers trying to enter the countries of their former European colonizers. The second film, "The World Like a Jewel in the Hand" (2022), focuses on the destruction of the Jewish-Muslim world through a narrative that evolves from catalogs of jewelry, found photographs, and collections of pillaged objects. In both this last film and the book, Azoulay interweaves autobiography and political theory, narrating how to unravel the centuries-old entanglement of Jewish, Arab, and Berber worlds.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Silvia Franceschini (curator at CIVA) and Jean-Baptiste Naudy, founder of the Editions Rot-Bo-Krik and translator of the book.