In some urban centres in Central America, gathering in a shopping mall or a park is not an insignificant activity, it’s a strategy to feel safe—to find safety in numbers. Never far away, armed guards, attack dogs, chain-link fences, and barbed wire are part of everyday life for citizens who live under the constant threat of random violence. When each day is filled with thoughts of a potential assault, the contours of one’s life are transformed and reduced, little by little. And yet in spite of adversity and fear, ways to meet one another, to love one another, and to build a society together emerge and take shape.

 

La Colonia brings together photographs gleaned by Valérian Mazataud over the past decade, initially alongside various news reports, then while experiencing more closely, with his family, the reality of a Honduran neighbourhood protected from the harshness of the world around it by its guards and high walls. In a manner recalling the way violence we may not see first-hand nonetheless embeds itself in our minds, the artist, having distanced himself from sensationalist photography, observes instead the ecosystem of fear that is visible in the patterns and details that now form part of the texture of the city.

 

This exhibition is part of our The View from Here programming, which invites us to imagine how we might reinvent ourselves today by cutting up what is and reconstituting it as possible futures.

Biographie

Valérian Mazataud est photographe documentaire à Montréal.

Il partage son temps entre le photojournalisme et une pratique artistique en photographie.

Son livre photographique «liwa mairin» a reçu une mention honorable de la Burtynsky Grant 2019.

Son projet photographique «Grand Nord» a été exposé dans plusieurs centres d’artistes québecois ainsi que lors du Festival Voies Off Arles (France, 2015).

L’installation multimédia «la fin de la terre» a été exposée à travers le Canada, notamment lors des Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie (2016).

Il a participé à plusieurs expositions collectives : Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (2017, 2019), Centre Canadien d’Architecture (2021).

Photo-reporter pour le quotidien Le Devoir, il a également collaboré avec de nombreux médias internationaux (Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Globe and Mail, Libération…).

Photographe autodidacte, il détient un diplôme d’ingénieur agronome.

Entre 2002 et 2004 il a réalisé un tour du monde à vélo de 21000 km.

 

 

Vernissage
25 October 2024 17:00 -21:00
Décoration de jardin dans la Colonia Primavera, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Des hommes discutent dans l’aire de restauration d’un centre commercial de Tegucigalpa.