Here we are, already approaching week 3 of our landmark exhibition, THE LIVING ARCHIVES - MEMORIES BEYOND THE ATLANTIC, presenting for the first time in Amsterdam, the compelling visual chronicles by critically acclaimed photographer and PdH researcher, NICOLA LO CALZO.

Humbled by the phenomenal response this exhibition has garnered thus far, I find myself reflecting back on how such a particular moment in time actually came to be. With nearly half a year in the making, and a decade long friendship, I guess one might say, this collaboration has been a long time coming. 

One of the recurring questions I get asked ever since the show opened, and quite frankly throughout most of the preceding period, is: How does one encounters and ultimately curates such an expensive body of work?

I thought I’d share not just the answer to this question, but also give you full access to the cosmogenesis of our show.

Nicola Lo Calzo's actuality is always incredibly dense, with a constellation of projects and creative undertakings blooming simultaneously at any given time, including last year alone, 2 major museums exhibitions, a PhD in Sociological Sciences and several book launches, alongside his ongoing sacerdoce as a celebrated university teacher. Never a dull moment in the life of the Maestro. It wasn't always easy synchronizing our schedules.

On a more personal note, the past 2 years have been a rather tumultuous whirlwind. In the shortest period of time, I was confronted with insurmountable grief, following the passing of my beloved Maman and the near toppling of our family's nucleus. Shortly thereafter, I was forced by unforeseen circumstances, to glimpse at the prospect of my own mortality. Yet, life has its own wondrous ways of either showing us our limits or helping us surpass them. I am incredibly grateful to count myself as an example of the latter.

So as you can imagine, this exhibition holds great significance for me. First and foremost, it marks the gallery’s long awaited return to a physical entity. Second, it constitutes an unprecedented milestone in our mandate, because this is the first time, we welcome to our roster, an artist who is not an actual African citizen nor one of its direct descendants, although that is debatable, since Africa is the cradle of humanity. Yet ILÉ’s postulate since Day 1, was always to embrace critical and situated perspectives that transcend geographical origins, enriching the ongoing dialogue around Afro-diasporic worlds. In that sense alone, Nicola Lo Calzo is the quintessential ideal match.

Lo Calzo is undeniably one the most prolific artist I have ever known. Preparing for this show, I initially felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of works comprised in his catalog. So how does one encounters and ultimately curates such an expensive body of work?

I am pleased to say that, although rather daunting at first, Lo Calzo's decades spanning KAM Project has served as the sovereign backbone to our exhibition.

Conceived as An Archipelago of Resistance, the KAM Project is a reflexion on contemporary memories within our postcolonial societal context. The memories in question are those that confront weapons of resistance and knowledge to the "abyss of slavery", in the words of celebrated French writer Edouard Glissant. The KAM Project takes the form of a photographic archipelago across the Atlantic and Mediterranean world, spanning different territories of West Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the Americas.

Resistance to slavery and colonialism is presented here, not as a photographic "subject" but as a possible reading grid, referencing contemporary practices of resistance that inhabit and perdure from the margins. The KAM Project aims to expose the symbolic, political and historical links that connect these dissident practices, by offering us a possible photographic counter-narrative, allowing for a reflection on contemporary issues of modernity.

Throughout the project, the photographs by Nicola Lo Calzo question us not only about the presence of these diminished practices and stories but also about the consensus around their marginalization, sometimes, until their erasure within the dominant discourse. In fine, the KAM Project asks a fundamental question regarding how memory and oblivion are the inverted terms of a discourse on the same past, wither that of slavery or colonialism.

For Lo Calzo, it seemed essential to also question the memory practices which, in reverse, have nurtured their invisibility. For example the way in which elites or dominant groups have built their relationship to the past on the "unthought" history of the slavery, colonialism and its many struggles.

It is through this prism that Lo Calzo has built, over the years, an archipelago of memory, uncovering ways in which practices of preservation continue to participate both in the construction of a counter-speech, familial or collective memories of resistance, but also the (de)construction of gender race and class bias. Furthermore, Lo Calzo proposes to apprehend these practices of resistance through the intersectional prism of queer identity.

In this regard, the challenge of the KAM Project is political, for it aspires to bare apparent the existing network of linked, connected and interconnected narratives, which beckons us, today perhaps more than ever, to a decenter our gaze, as a precondition for imagining a new relationship to ourselves and the world.

In this perspective, Lo Calzo's compelling visual chronicles become a tool in the struggle for the emancipation of minority lives, contributing to the process of their visibility and recognition, both within the strategic fields encompassing the world of institutions and scholarly cultures, but also within alternative spaces of enunciation produced by the communities themselves.

Since 2020, Nicola Lo Calzo has included the KAM Project as part of a doctoral research at the Graduate School of Humanities (Université Paris Ensapc), where he examines the possible uses of contemporary photography to address the memories of subaltern entities.

It truly is a great privilege to bring such profoundly meaningful works to general audiences in Amsterdam and by extension, the world at large. We look forward to welcoming a great many more of you to the gallery, so you can experience this bounty in the flesh.