Tricontinental, a graphic survey, 2010

Abonnenc is researching the work of the French-born film director Sarah Maldoror, who devoted herself to the liberation movements in lusophone Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. At Manifesta 8, Abonnenc presents her first film, Monangambée, produced in Algeria in 1969. By exhibiting associated material and posters published as part of Tricontinental magazine, her work is placed within the context of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in Asia, Africa and South America. Abonnenc is currently searching for a copy of Guns for Banta, the second film by Sarah Maldoror, which was seized by the Algerian government in 1971.

Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc. September the 12th 1977, Cayenne, French-Guiana. Lives and works Paris.

Abonnenc is particularly interested in the history of colonization, how identities are made or unmade over time due to conquest, expropriation, and conscious or unconscious traditions. Having himself been born and raised in French Guiana, he is aware that parts of colonial history are being ignored or suppressed by the collective unconscious. His drawings, photographs, and video pieces evoke the gaps left by history: in a series of drawings titled Paysages de Traite (Slave-Trade Landscapes, 2004-2007), he expunged the figures of slaves and colonists from the original engravings that illustrated the mission of the nineteenth-century colonist and explorer, Jules Crevaux.