'In the crossed framework of Africa2020 and Afriqu’à Nanterre, La Terrasse proposes a personal exhibition of Mário Macilau, photographer born in Mozambique in 1984. He presents a new series entitled Circle of Memories, evoking the Portuguese colonial heritage of his country.
In this series, he combines in the same photograph portraits of families (often the mother and child) with the immediate surroundings, places in ruins, especially the buildings dating from the colonial period. Each photograph was carried out in the same break time, a time of slow pause, which allows him to direct his lens first on people, then on the scene, in reverse. A sensitive reflection on time and memory, suggesting both the strength and fragility of the lives of past, present and future generations.
With more than a hundred projects, the Africa2020 Season, operated by the Institut Français, invites to rethink our vision of Pan-Africanism, this principle of unity and emancipation based on otherness. Nanterre is following in the footsteps of this unprecedented Season: with Afriqu’à Nanterre, a constellation of events federating the city and its associative fabric until December, it brings a reading of the dynamics of the city-world (its values, its resources, its inhabitants) for the benefit of the (re)knowledge of Africa of today.'
