Hélène Jayet

© Helene Jayet / Signatures

Malian Chronicles by Hélène Jayet

To complete our Malian interlude, Hélène Jayet’s chronicles accompany this short film. Brought up in the Basque country by adoptive parents, the photographer, originally from Mali, examines the search for the self and, in particular, the place of black people in French society. Her series, produced as a photo essay in Mali (the homeland of her biological father), is presented in the form of overlapping images that constitute a storyboard of her own history and identity in which space and time merge. These themes have guided her work for a long time. “Mali, the land where I was not born… Mali, the land where I half come from”, muses the artist. These sequences are accompanied by audio recordings that capture background sounds of everyday life and music in Mali.

Festival direCtor Lois Lammerhuber speaks about Hélène Jayet’s Exhibition