Artists

Leonore Mau

Press release

"Sa w wè a se pa sa" (There’s more to it than meets the eye. Haitian saying)

Can an exhibition by a German photographer convey an image of Haiti that is not characterized by stereotypes? With "Out of Focus", U5 present the images of Leonore Mau (1916-2013) in a multimedia, sensory environment.

Leonore Mau traveled to Haiti in the 1970s during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. She traveled together with the writer Hubert Fichte (1935-1986). The trip was part of a long-term research project on Afro-diasporic religions. The project took Mau and Fichte to Benin, Brazil, Grenada, Senegal and Venezuela, among other places. Mau's photographs were published in the photo books "Xango" (1976) and "Petersilie" (1980) and in travel reports in many German magazines. However, the majority of her photographs have not yet been published or shown in exhibitions and are in the photographer's estate at the bpk-Bildagentur, Berlin.

In Mau's photo books, there are photographs that confirm the prejudiced image of Haiti and Vodou, but in her extensive legacy there are many more images in which everyday life, community, dictatorship, spirituality and tourism coexist. When looking at the images, however, questions also arise about ethics, representation, exoticism and extractivism. How can we look at them without reproducing old power relations? "Out of Focus" wants to engage with these images in a way that allows for ambivalence and in which criticism and beauty are not contradictory.
"What you see is not what it is": the environment developed by U5 in collaboration with ALIAS architects addresses questions of showing and not showing.

Together with the cultural anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse, the artist and filmmaker Madafi Pierre, the Houngan (priest), musician and general director of the Bureau National d'Ethnologie in Port-au-Prince Erol Josué and other people and their different expertise, the exhibition develops a dialogical, critical and decolonial approach to Mau’s images.

The exhibition at the Lenbachhaus is an artistic development of the research project "Out of Focus" by Dora Imhof and the artists' collective U5 at the University of Zurich. The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive four-language publication edited by Dora Imhof, Gina Athena Ulysse, and U5, published by Hatje Cantz.

Cooperation partners: S. Fischer Foundation, bpk-Bildagentur, Berlin

With generous support of Förderverein Lenbachhaus e.V., Pro Helvetia, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne