Women, Memory & Transmission. Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts and Literature
Photo Oxford 2021 - Exhibition & Conference
Project Lead:
FWO Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Wolfson College
Collaborator:
Artist
Partner Organisations:
Association des lecteurs de J.M.G. Le Clézio
About the project:
In collaboration with Photo Oxford Festival 2021, hosted by the Maison Française d’Oxford, and supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme, the international and interdisciplinary conference “Women, Memory & Transmission: Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts and Literature” explored what it meant for women to transmit memories in postcolonial contexts.
The conference considered the strategies women developed to address postcolonial issues, the challenges they faced in being heard and valued as tellers of history, and the ethical and political questions raised by the reception of their work. It brought together art-world figures and scholars in the fields of gender studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies and Global South studies, contributing to a better understanding of the key social and political role of women in the reinterpretation of colonial history as acts of resistance and empowerment.
The conference coincided with a photographic exhibition by Elisa Moris Vai, showcased during the 2021 Festival at the Maison Française d’Oxford from 15 October to 15 November. The French photographic artist Elisa Moris Vai presented her series Catherine, Kiambé, Surya. The exhibition showed her photographic response to three female characters in La Quarantaine (1995) and Révolutions (2003), set in Mauritius, by Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. G. Le Clézio. The images closely intertwined fiction and reality, literature and photography, to explore how the transmission of memory could serve as a tool of resistance and empowerment for women in postcolonial contexts.
Convened by: Justine Feyereisen and Elisa Moris Vai
In partnership with: TORCH, Fluxus, Photo Oxford 2021, Wolfson College (Oxford) and the Association des Lecteurs de J.-M.G. Le Clézio.
The conference was held in a hybrid format, with some speakers joining online while others participated physically at the Maison Française d’Oxford.
Convened by Justine Feyereisen and Elisa Moris Vai
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mMpaezMGlO8
FWO Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Wolfson College
Dr Justine Feyereisen is currently a FWO Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Ghent University (BE) where she is conducting a project in French and Francophone Studies entitled “Reimagining Migration Narratives with Ecopoetical Postcolonial Perspectives in Transatlantic Francophone Literature (Caribbean Archipelago, Metropolitan France and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1999-present)”. She is affiliated with Wolfson College (Oxford) and Maison Française d’Oxford. Since 2016, she is a non-tenured Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles, after a FNRS PhD Fellowship at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Université Grenoble Alpes, and a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research also led her to Wolfson College (University of Oxford) as a Wiener-Anspach Junior Research Fellow (2019-2021). Her research interests and expertise include 20th-21st Literature in French, postcolonial and decolonization literature, utopian fictions and sustainability, international migrations, body and senses, memory and postmemory, spatial studies, gender studies, photography and text intermediality, ecopoetics and ecofeminism. She is President of the Association des lecteurs de J.-M.G. Le Clézio.
Artist
Elisa Moris Vai is a french emerging artist based in Lille (FR) working with lens-based media, who produce research-driven work. Her practice is characterized by the inventive use of performative strategies and the intersection of documentary and fiction. History, memory, and social representations are at the core of her work, with a current focus on french colonisation. She was awarded the Panel’s choice of the Photo Oxford Open Call 2020 and shortlisted for the Open 20 Solo Award of Photofringe festival, Brighton.
Moris Vai’s work has been shown in venues across Europe (Noorderlicht Festival (NL), Photofringe festival (UK), Ovada Gallery (Oxford, UK), and Les Passerelles art center, Pontaut-Combault (FR)). Her first solo show, curated by Pelumi Odubanjo, supported by Fluxus Art Projects and Torch as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, will be presented at Maison Française, Oxford, from 15/10 to 15/11 2021. Her profile has been featured in Photomonitor and The Guardian.
Moris Vai extends her art practice to curating conferences relating to the themes she explores. During the last year, she worked in the UK with Photofringe Festival and Grain Photography Hub.
She has a MA in Performing Arts (Free University of Brussels / Free University of Berlin) and a BA in Photography (EFET School of Photography, Paris).
Photograph from the series 'Catherine, Kiambé, Surya’ ©Elisa Moris Vai
Photograph from the series 'Catherine, Kiambé, Surya’ ©Elisa Moris Vai
