The Past is a Foreign Country
CANTOR FITZGERALD GALLERY, HAVERFORD COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA, USA
AUGUST 28 — OCTOBER 9, 2015
How is a country’s national story told through its architecture? When should the structures of the past be dispensed for the future? The Past is a Foreign Country is the first solo exhibition in North America by the Ivorian artist François-Xavier Gbré, whose photographs survey relics of the built environment, from the ruins of colonial-era monuments to the futurist symbols of the cosmopolitan city. The exhibition features site-specific installations of immersive wallpaper prints and a chronicle of more than fifty buildings and civic structures throughout West Africa and France. United by a methodical, often distanced perspective on architecture and landscape as a form of documentary evidence, Gbré’s images summon the personal experience of public space and the social aspirations encoded in concrete, rebar, clay, and dust.
Critics:
Warscapes, Hilary R. Whitham
Artblog, Evan Paul Laudenslager
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College on Artsy
The Past is a Foreign Country
Published by Haverford College
95 pages, soft cover, 165 x 210 mm
Texts by Brendan Wattenberg, Emmanuel Iduma, Susanna D. Wing
