"Terra Nullius"

Terra Nullius: a land that belongs to no one. Starting in the 16th century, this expression designated a territory that no European country had yet claimed, and that would belong by right to the first one that invaded it. Two centuries later, this doctrine gave force of law to the European colonisation of territories occupied by “savages”.

This exhibition presents the works of three young artists whose highly varied approaches bring into play the traditional categories used by the history of photography: the documentary image, the portrait and the landscape. Here, the reference to a historical genre becomes the starting point for a reflection on the territory and its modes of occupation. The spaces invoked range from the forests of French Guiana (Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc), to the streets of Martinique (Mujezira Elezovic) and the suburbs of Paris (Lukas Hoffmann). What these works have in common is the representation of “non-places” and the different kinds of colonisation that they may undergo: by the constructed landscape, by the return of natural growth or by the mass of faces in the urban space. Burnt earth, cities disappearing under a glaring sun, wastelands – the images produced here come across as almost abstract compositions shaped both by artistic forms and by their own subjacent tensions.

Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz
16, rue Charles-VII, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne