Guy Tillim
Leopold and Mobutu
12 May - 19 June 2004
'the incorruptible Kodak ... The only witness I have encountered in my long
experience that I couldn't bribe'
King Leopold in Mark Twain, King Leopold's Soliloquy
Guy Tillim, winner of the 2004 DaimlerChrysler Prize for photography, exhibits his new series of works entitled Leopold and Mobutu at Michael Stevenson. Tillim has visited the Congo region repeatedly over the past three years. Most recently, he spent July - September 2003 photographing traces of the colonial occupation of the Congo by King
Leopold II of Belgium's and vestiges of more recent plunder under Mobutu Sese Seko.
This latter series of images were taken to accompany a documentary based on Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost, due to be released at the end of 2004.
The exhibition comprises a series of single images and diptychs and triptychs juxtaposing historical sites in the Congo and Belgium with contemporary views of daily life in the DRC.
Tillim's work will be widely exhibited internationally in 2004. His solo show for DamlierChrysler opens in Stuttgart in May and travels to Berlin in June. An exhibition of his recent South African work will open at the SA National Gallery in November 2004 before touring South African public galleries. His works are also included in the large Africa Remix show that opens at the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, as well as in The Human
Condition at the Alternative Museum in New York, in Unsettled at the
National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, and at Galleria Sala I as part of the Rome Foto Festival in May.
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