KAZAL – Narrating Haitian Memories

KAZAL is a photographic project that traces the memories of the dictatorship of François Duvalier in Haiti through the history of Kazal, a village north of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, where a major event in the contemporary history of the country was perpetrated in 1969 and subsequently obliterated from official history: the massacre of Kazal.

Over the course of three years, six photographers from the Haitian collective Kolektif 2 Dimansyon (K2D) initiated a dialogue with the inhabitants of Kazal to investigate their memories of places and events. They encountered a troubled history which, to this day, has not yet been acknowledged.

Within the project, photography is the main form of narrating memory. At the same time, as testimony of the past, photography can be a source of historical knowledge; it reactivates the memory of a historical fact and invites reflection. This project functions as a basis to explore how photography remains, albeit, a fragmentary, partial, subjective, polysemous testimony.

The works show an interpretation of reality and trauma that can never be completely grasped in the context of Haiti and a post-Duvalier generation. For this presentation of K2D’s KAZAL project, the show features an additional perspective on memory narration from Haitian artist Tessa Mars. Mars explores the transformative strategies for survival, resistance, empowerment and healing that image-making and storytelling propose.

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