Featured | Hélène Amouzou

Autoportraits

Photos taken in the attic of the artist’s residence, the subject matter – herself, the images somehow haunting with her apparition-like silhouette placing her between absence and presence.

Why this incessant preoccupation with self-portraiture?

Dating back to her study years, this series of self-portraits comprise a compulsory exercise within Hélène Amouzou’s study program. Concurrently, the period where she sought asylum in Belgium. The images affectively spoke of her frame of mind during a time where she felt stigmatised and excluded. They spoke of her search to find herself, to assert her existence; a theme that she carries forward in her body of work. The continual questioning of identity and that haunting question- Where am I really from?

This body of work is currently on view in Paris at the musée du quai Branly, part of the Photoquai exhibition on from September 13 – November 11, 2011.

About

Hélène Amouzou, born in Togo in 1969 has been living in Brussels for the last fourteen years. In 2004 she enrolled at the Academy of Drawing and Visual Arts, Brussels, where she studied video and photography. In 2008 she opted for photography as the medium best suited to her artistic research and technical experiments.

Hélène Amouzou prefers to work with film, which she sees as demanding greater attention to detail and allowing greater scope for serendipity than digital photography. Her style resembles that of Francesca Woodman, whom she acknowledges as an influence, along with Duane Michals, Albert Dürer and Francis Bacon: “Self-portrait is a way of writing without words,” she explains. “My aim is to reveal the deepest parts of myself.” And so she continues to write a story exploring invisibility, cultural background and identity.

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All images courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved.

Biography excerpt from Photoquai.

Where is Togo?

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