Blank. Lurdes R. Basolí

Based on a double personal experience on the African continent, Lurdes R. Basolí proposes with BLANK a work of decolonisation of the Western (or Westernised) tourist’s gaze, by bringing “tribal travel” to the table today. In an exercise in (self-)criticism, she contrasts the home album of the safari she made with her family in the 1990s with the visual conversation held by Whatsapp since 2017 with Kimotonge Mayoni, a Maasai friend from Kilimanjaro and the subject of a large-scale portrait in the exhibition. By establishing new relationships between the photographs, Basolí wants to make us consider the colonial heritage that persists in our ways of representing the Maasai people, which perpetuates stereotypes that speak more of “us” than of “them”.