"Le Temps Beni des Colonies"
Goethe-Institut August 18 to September 8, 2006
In colonial times, thousands of images were sent to Europe as postcards from French Indo-China: landscapes, cities and their inhabitants - the more exotic the better. In those days, long before the mind-numbing flood of images we experience today, such photos were valued and respected conveyors of information between the world of the colonized and that of the European masters. Seen as a whole, the carefully compiled editions of postcards were part of the colonial annexation and appropriation. The variety of images as well as their exotic character were proof of the wealth and size, but also of the "civilizing duty" of the colonial empire. In this sense the photos are not only a sign of geographical and ethnological interest, but also often documents of colonial arrogance, self-decreed confirmation of civilized superiority. Particularly popular were cards with which the Europeans in Indo-China - armed forces and civil servants, traders, planters and businessmen, missionaries and teachers - consciously communicated to those at home a thrilling impression of their lives in the colonies. Taken together with the handwritten messages on the backs of the postcards, they present a very graphic picture not only of the land and people of Indo-China, but even more so of the mentality and self-conception of the colonial "masters", who were themselves often from modest beginnings.
Kristine McCarroll, an Australian artist of French origin, has chosen several especially significant examples from the wealth of photographic documents about Vietnam and Indo-China. She has digitally enlarged them, printed them onto canvas and overpainted them, adding original collages and quotes from contemporaries. What results is at times funny, at times depressing, occasionally sarcastic, but in any case a critical commentary of an historical epoch and a political practice of paternalism and repression which was certainly not unique to French colonialism. The past is drawn into the present by means of art to be confronted by the critical judgment of the viewer. In McCarroll's images, which are political art in the best sense of the word, the power of aesthetic composition serves the quest for historical honesty and truth.
