Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)

Photographer Hélène Amouzou, and curator Bindi Vora, capture the in/visibility of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe, moving between 21st century Togo and Belgium in a series of haunting autoportraits.

Born in Togo, and now based in Belgium, Hélène Amouzou’s self-portraits consider how migration has shaped her identity. Her blurred, ghostly figure, set against suitcases, and the peeling wallpaper of a destitute attic, suggests at the sense of in/visibility, and the particular experiences of women trapped in domestic spaces. These photographs, created during a period where she was seeking political asylum, have become documents of her family’s two-decade long journey seeking safety and citizenship during the 1990s and 2000s.

As the artist’s first exhibition in the UK opens at Autograph, she details her practice, and use of long exposures and sweeping motions to suggest continuities between past and present. Hélène shares Togo’s perspectives on northern European countries, as informed by colonial histories and myths. Togoland was a ‘protectorate’ of the German Empire in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, an area which included the current state of Togo and much of Ghana, and which Europeans had long dubbed ‘the Slave Coast’. During the First World War, it was invaded by British and French forces, and endured military rule by the latter until its independence in 1960. She likens Belgium’s location - similarly placed between France and Germany - whilst curator Bindi Vora connects with her own family’s experiences of displacement, herself a second-generation Ugandan-Asian migrant with connections to both Kenya and India. Plus, we discuss the impact of this public exhibition on Hélène’s private, intimate practice, and what it means to display these works in the context of the British media discourse about ‘migrant crises’.

Hélène Amouzou: Voyages runs at Autograph in London until 20 January 2024.

Part of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.

For more on Nil Yalter, hear the artist on Exile is a Hard Job (1974-Now) at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/36b8c7d8d613b78262e54e38ac62e70f

WITH: Hélène Amouzou, Togo-born and Belgium-based photographer. Bindi Vora, British-Indian interdisciplinary photographic artist, and curator at Autograph. Her first book is Mountain of Salt (2023), based on a 2020-2021 series of the same name.

ART: ‘Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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