Amanda Ramasawmy & Shiraz Bayjoo

26 Jul 2023 7-8.30pm

Overview

LUX is proud to present the World premiere of Amanda Ramasawmy’s new film ‘Provenance’ (2023), screening with Shiraz Bayjoo’s film ‘Zott Konn – Yeman’ (2022). Ramasawmy will be joined by Mauritian artist Shiraz Bayjoo to discuss themes related to their work around colonial archiving in the Indian Ocean, diasporic methods of storytelling, and Shiraz’s recent research into the collections of Kew Gardens as part of his residency with Delfina Foundation.

‘Provenance’ will be available to watch online on the LUX website for 2 weeks from the 27th of July. 

‘Provenance’ (2023)

‘Provenance’ is an essay film that explores the colonial practices of claiming and preserving nature, the inextricable links to human colonisation and its legacy from an ecological and spiritual perspective. Using the island of Mauritius as a setting to examine these ideas, the film connects a mountain, a basket weaver, the loneliest palm tree in the world and a rehabilitated indigenous forest. These seemingly separate entities co-exist in past, present and future tenses, bound by an intangible ancestral presence. Provenance was researched and filmed during the artist’s residency at Partage (a Triangle Network partner), Mauritius, in 2021. Supported by LUX and using public funding by Arts Council England.

Content note: In ‘Provenance’ (2023) a racial slur is used once in historical context. 

Amanda Ramasawmy is a British born artist and designer with Mauritian heritage. Her work examines memory and displacement, methods of archiving and healing practices. Her practice mainly focuses on moving-image, using different cinematic techniques as part of the research process as well as sound and material exploration. Amanda has exhibited at and created work for Almanac (Italy), Barbican Centre, Art Night, Soho Theatre, Theatre503, Flat Time House, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Toronto Media Arts Centre. 

‘Zott Konn – Yeman’ (2022)

‘Zot Konn – Yeman‘, brings together Mauritian Creole and the Bantu language Fang, merging the two African languages spoken by Bayjoo and the dancer Nicolas Faubert. Translated as ‘they know – the wise’ the title refers to a collective questioning of existing systems of knowledge and a pursuit of future silos for ancestral knowledges. The work juxtaposes sites of origin and extraction, methodologies of preservation and domination, and the global interconnection and fragmentation rendered by colonialism.The footage brings together multiple journeys and lines of enquiry, most notably a body of research that Bayjoo has been conducting at the Botanic Gardens at Kew in London into the the transplantation of species from the Mascarene islands to the UK during colonial rule and their current place in the nation’s archives. 

Shiraz Bayjoo is a contemporary multi-disciplinary artist who works with film, painting, photography, performance, and installation. His research-based practice focuses on personal and public archives addressing cultural memory and postcolonial nationhood in a manner that challenges dominant cultural narratives. Bayjoo has exhibited with the Gropius Bau, Berlin; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Institute of International Visual Arts, London; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; 5th Edition Dhaka Art Summit; 14th Biennale of Sharjah; 13th Biennale of Dakar; and 21st Biennale of Sydney. Bayjoo is a recipient of the Gasworks Fellowship and the Arts Council of England, and was commissioned for Art Night, London 2019. He was an artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation in 2021, and has recently been awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. In 2022 Bayjoo presented a solo exhibition at the Diaspora Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennial, and is currently presenting at the 15th edition of Sharjah Biennial.

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