The Cimarron exhibition, organised in partnership with the CRP/ Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France, presents a selection of photography work by Charles Fréger (1975) devoted to masquerades.
The French photographer travelled to North and South America to create a non-exhaustive inventory of masquerades, performed mainly by the descendants of African slaves, celebrating the memory of their peers and their unique cultures.
Within these masquerades, – the masks, make-up, costumes, ornaments and accessories – African, indigenous and colonial cultures intermingle, caught in the vertigo of a centuries-old syncretic movement. Here, more than ever before, the masquerade falls within the scope of one community’s view of another, a space in which the relation to the oppressor is replayed or reinvented, whether imitating or reversing it, but always subverting it. On the path to Cimarron, which only partially expresses the practice of slavery, a form of opposing power takes shape. Rather than concealed by the masquerade, it is revealed by it.
Shot between 2014 and 2018, this series covers fourteen countries in the American continent, from southern US states to Brazil.
Curatorship:
Audrey Hoareau, Director of the CRP/ Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France
With the CRP / Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-de-France
↑ CAZUMBÁ, São Luís, Maranhão, Brésil De la série CIMARRON, 2014-2018 © Charles Fréger