The past few months I have been busy editing the hours and kilomters of material. My son and me both photographed and filmed and we were being filmed by the people we met on the way. I am now working on the concept of the film/documentary/installation.
A small selection of film stills:
When we arrived in Dakar my son wanted to go home.
We are back in Amsterdam after an amazing 2,5 months trip!
First of November me and my son started our road trip from Amsterdam to Dakar – via France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania – in a beautiful Mercedes classic.
We will stay with family and friends along the way, all Senegalese migrants. It is a continuation of Presence in Absence, with a more personal approach.
I am showing “Presence in Absence” in the window of Amsterdam’s best bookstore: Athenaeum at the Spui in Amsterdam’s city center, till Thursday October 30. Go and have a look and buy the book!
I traveled to Bamako with Liberian writer Vamba Sherif for an article on the manuscripts of Timbuktu in April 2014. The article was published in One World Magazine:
One World magazine published my series on seduction by Senegalese women in the June issue:
My publication “Presence in Absence” is ready!
Presence in Absence has been published as a multi-fold poster, with a soft linen inside cover, a special binding and a text essay by curator Salah M. Hassan:
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Presence in Absence is a series of new photographs and video-based work by the Dutch photographer Judith Quax, in which she continues to explore African displacement and clandestine migration to the West.
Her intimate portraits of people on both sides of the migration divide – those who managed to leave and made it to the West, and those who stayed behind waiting to be reunited – humanize the subjects and expose their vulnerabilities.
Quax emphasizes how photographs travel and how family albums become the migrant’s deeply personal possessions, in the process becoming a source of longing for families left behind, irretrievable times and lost intimate spaces.
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You can order the book here.
Size: 17 x 24,5 cm, soft linen inside cover, four multifolded posters and seperate text book
Text: Salah M. Hassan
Design: René Put
Publisher: Timmer Art Books
Edition: 250
Price: € 18
At the Dak’art Biennale I will present my multimedia installation “Presence in Absence” at the Residency of the Dutch Embassy in Fann Residence, Dakar. The opening is on Thursday May 8 at 17.30 and the exhibition is running till May 18.
‘Presence in Absence’ is a reality that many migrants and their families are facing in both Europe and Africa. Families are being separated for many years and as a result of undocumented status often not capable to travel back. People are holding on to memories, tangible in the form of photos; carried with them or present in the privacy and intimacy of their (bed-)rooms.
“Utopian Archives: Excavating Pasts for Postcolonial Futures” is a project initiated by anthropologist Ferdinand de Jong and will (a.o.) result in an exhibition by Senegalese photographer Mamadou Gomis and me at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, UK, May 12 – September 7, 2014. From October 21 – February 1 2015 the exhibition will run in the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK.
The project pertains to the pan-African heritage of Senegal. As one of the Utopian ideologies of the twentieth century, Pan-Africanism still requires a full analysis in terms of its impact on the current outlook of postcolonial citizens. How do contemporary citizens engage with the Pan-African legacy at this moment in history in which the postcolony is said to be in serious crisis?
We did a successful projection, September 10 2013!:
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