I'm not a slave, but I'm... (eng)

Dak'art 2018

Official selection

I'm not a slav, but I'm...

Pour la version en français cliquez ICI

Economists agree that contemporary Africa carries with it a significant economic potential. The dynamism of its demography will make it "in thirty-five years a quarter of the world's population"; one of the biggest markets. This explains the craze shown by the rest of the world in recent decades. One of the challenges therefore will face the African people will be to overcome the multiple traumas (slave trade,
colonization, dictatorship, neocolonialism ...) so they were the object. This in order to dialogue with the rest of the world without complex.


Africa must be resilient because "its only urgency is to live up to its potential" as written by Senegalese economist and writer Felwine Sarr in AFROTOPIA, Editions Philippe REY.
This transformation, this metamorphosis of the African, will allow him to take advantage of the interest generated by his continent. This resilience will also be useful to contribute with his own weapons to this globalized contemporary civilization.

The series "I'm not a slave, but I'm ..." questions this resilience by relying on a non-exhaustive inventory of traumatic events such as the slave trade (transatlantic and Arab-Muslim), colonization so some archives are still classified by slavery and colonial powers. The question asked here is whether we can be this "new man" if we do not know the whole truth of memory that should motivate our resilience?

How to achieve this much desired transformation of Africa if we sail a part of its history to Africans? This is the case of the Arab-Muslim slave trade. Its existence is recorded in 666 in the Lake Chad Basin (7th century AD) according to Jacques GIRI in Histoire économique du sahel edited by KHARTALA. This trade done by the Arabs, older than the transatlantic slave trade, remains a subject rarely mentioned in Africa.
I discuss this subject in the series "I'm not a slave, but I'm ..." by relying on places that have a symbolic relationship with the Muslim religion on the island of Gorée. We have the Grand Mosque of Goree Island which was during the slave trade probably a slave house. The frescoes on the walls of the island taking the face of Muslim marabouts.
Beyond the Arab-Muslim slave trade, we have colonization. I have invested historical places such as the chamber of cannon on the castle built on the island during the colonial period, the ruins of the governor's palace and the residences of signares (women from miscegenation and enjoying an advantageous status when of the slave trade)
The photos have in common the presence of a female character like a spectrum that strolls between the first and second shot. The latter represents this contemporary Africa who travels in the past in search of the truth about her memory in order to begin the process of resilience back to the present. This memory struggles to be fully formed. Memory in which the blur and the net coexist, the truth and the lie, the strong and the weak. This resilience by the absolute truth that will "emancipate Africa and free it" [...] of the trails that are indicated to him, but walk quickly on the path it will be chosen "as mentioned Felwine Sarr in AFROTOPIA.

If you wish to consult the entire series, please send an email to yvonngassam@gmail.com.