Maryam Jafri, The Day After

Maryam Jafri, « The Day After », Exhibition view at Bétonsalon – Centre for Art and Research, Paris, 2015 © Aurélien Mole.,

In the Spring of 2015, Bétonsalon – Centre for Art and Research wel­comes artist Maryam Jafri to develop a four months exper­i­mental exhi­bi­tion and public pro­gram in Paris. Titled The Day After, it will be the artist’s first pro­ject in France and will acti­vate a broad local and inter­na­tional net­work of col­lab­o­ra­tors and par­tic­i­pants.

The Day After takes root in Maryam Jafri’s ongoing pro­ject Independence Day 1934-1975 (2009-pre­sent), an instal­la­tion com­posed of pho­tographs taken on the first inde­pen­dence day in former European colonies across Asia and Africa, between 1934 and 1975. The photos are sourced from the coun­tries them­selves and dis­play striking sim­i­lar­i­ties despite dis­parate geo­graph­ical and tem­poral ori­gins, revealing a polit­ical model exported from Europe and in the pro­cess of being cloned throughout the world. The instal­la­tion gathers images sourced from 29 Asian and African archives, jux­ta­posed according to a specific grid around cat­e­gories of events. In her arrange­ment, Jafri empha­sizes the generic char­acter of the rituals and cer­e­monies that took place during that 24 hours twi­light period when a ter­ri­tory trans­forms into a nation-state. The grid, rem­i­nis­cent of both photo-con­cep­tu­alism and the sto­ry­board medium, is broken, dis­turbing the ide­o­log­ical order at play in the images and sug­gesting non-linear read­ings.

The Day After will take this rare “col­lec­tion of col­lec­tions” – as Maryam Jafri calls it – as a starting point to ques­tion var­ious artistic, his­tor­ical and polit­ical issues arising from these images and their his­tor­ical and insti­tu­tional back­ground. What do we see when we look at the pho­to­graphic depic­tion of an event? How is his­tory framed by its rep­re­sen­ta­tions? How are images and their sig­ni­fi­ca­tions affected by their con­text of cir­cu­la­tion? How do visual sym­me­tries and com­par­isons trans­form our under­standing of the nar­ra­tives arising from the days of inde­pen­dence and, by exten­sion, the days after? And, back­stage, what do con­di­tions of access and preser­va­tion reveal about the stakes pro­jected onto these pho­tographs?

Conceived as a space of encoun­ters and debates, the exhi­bi­tion will serve as a ter­rain of inves­ti­ga­tion to map these ques­tions through a con­stel­la­tion of mate­rial and imma­te­rial con­tri­bu­tions (work­shops, sem­i­nars and per­for­mances) bringing the audi­ence together with Maryam Jafri and a net­work of researchers, scholars, jour­nal­ists and artists. This pro­gram will develop in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­eral depart­ments from Paris Diderot University; art schools (Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée; Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes-Métropole); and Kadist Art Foundation, among others.

Curated by : Mélanie Bouteloup and Virginie Bobin

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Maryam Jafri, « The Day After », detail of Maryam Jafri "Independence Day 1934-75", 2009 - ongoing, at Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris, 2015 © Aurélien Mole.,


About Maryam Jafri

Maryam Jafri is an artist working in video, per­for­mance and pho­tog­raphy, with a specific interest in ques­tioning the cul­tural and visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his­tory, pol­i­tics and economy. Over the last years, she notably inves­ti­gated the con­nec­tions between food pro­duc­tion and the pro­duc­tion of desire (Avalon, 2011) ; the elab­o­ra­tion of his­tor­ical nar­ra­tives through a post-colo­nial per­spec­tive (Siege of Khartoum, 1884, 2006) ; the effects of glob­al­iza­tion on working con­di­tions (Global Slum, 2012) or the polit­ical stakes of food net­works (Mouthfeel, 2014). Informed by a research based, inter­dis­ci­plinary pro­cess, her art­works are often marked by a visual lan­guage posed between film and the­atre and a series of nar­ra­tive exper­i­ments oscil­lating between script and doc­u­ment, frag­ment and whole. The Day After is her first exhi­bi­tion in France.

Solo exhi­bi­tions include Gasworks (London), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefeld), Galerie Nova (Zagreb), Beirut (Cairo), the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), and Malmö Konst Museum (Malmö). Her work has also been been fea­tured exten­sively in inter­na­tional group exhi­bi­tions, including at Beirut Art Center, 21er Haus (Vienna), Institute for African Studies (Moscow) and Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo); Camera Austria (Graz), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), CAFAM Biennial (Beijing), Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (Miami) in 2014; Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Mukha (Antwerp) in 2013; Manifesta 9 (Genk), Shangai Biennial and Taipei Biennial (Taipei) in 2012, among others. She was an artist-in-res­i­dence at the Delfina Foundation in London in 2014, as part of the pro­gram "The Politics of Food". In 2015, she will be part of the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial. She lives and works between New York and Copenhaghen.