SHORTLISTED PHOTOGRAPHERS 2012
hyères 27
Namsa Leuba
Switzerland
horaires
"I am an African-European, born in Switzerland and my project was accomplished on a trip to Guinea Conakry.
In this work I was interested in the construction and deconstruction of the body, as well as the depiction of the invisible.
I have studied ritual artifacts common to the cosmology of Guineans, statuettes that are part of a ceremonial structure. They are from another world and are the roots of the living. Thereby, I sought to touch the untouchable.
Modesty, luck, fecundity or a channel for exorcism – these statuettes embody a cultural value through what they represent or symbolise. In this work, I transform these objects, cosmological symbols of a community, which traditionally have a signification when used as part of rituals.
These objects are part of a collective that they must not be separated from, or else they risk losing their value. They are not the gods of this community, but their prayers. They are integrated into a rigorous symbolic order, in which every component has its place. They are ritual tools that I have animated by staging live models and, in a way, that I have desecrated by giving them another meaning; an unfamiliar meaning in the Guinean context."
Namsa Leuba (Switerland) graduated from the École Cantonale de Lausanne in 2011. Her series Ya Kala Ben was exhibited in the same year at the Espace Lausannois d’Art Contemporain (ELAC) and at the Planche(s) Contact festival in Deauville. Namsa Leuba lives in Neuchâtel.
www.namsaleuba.com
In this work I was interested in the construction and deconstruction of the body, as well as the depiction of the invisible.
I have studied ritual artifacts common to the cosmology of Guineans, statuettes that are part of a ceremonial structure. They are from another world and are the roots of the living. Thereby, I sought to touch the untouchable.
Modesty, luck, fecundity or a channel for exorcism – these statuettes embody a cultural value through what they represent or symbolise. In this work, I transform these objects, cosmological symbols of a community, which traditionally have a signification when used as part of rituals.
These objects are part of a collective that they must not be separated from, or else they risk losing their value. They are not the gods of this community, but their prayers. They are integrated into a rigorous symbolic order, in which every component has its place. They are ritual tools that I have animated by staging live models and, in a way, that I have desecrated by giving them another meaning; an unfamiliar meaning in the Guinean context."
Namsa Leuba (Switerland) graduated from the École Cantonale de Lausanne in 2011. Her series Ya Kala Ben was exhibited in the same year at the Espace Lausannois d’Art Contemporain (ELAC) and at the Planche(s) Contact festival in Deauville. Namsa Leuba lives in Neuchâtel.
www.namsaleuba.com