Christian Caujolle: You are the curator of the Biennale de Bamako for the second time. What has changed ?
Laura Serani: Many things have changed on many levels since 2009. New energies have emerged while instability has settled in consequenc...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

I like to record social and religious phenomena related to Islamic-Arabic culture. Based on my own experiences, I address the issue of women, their future, their liberation and the norms applied to them, notably through traditional marriage. When I was eight years old my mother began assemb...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

I use my cultural roots – Islam, Sufism and ancient Egyptian culture – as a springboard of exploration in the ocean of the contemporary world. Through my Sufi and ancient mythology readings, personal meetings with Sufi masters and on-site exploration, I am able to absorb a deep visual and phil...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

In Dakar, five minutes of rain suffice to flood the suburbs of Pikine, Rufisque and Guédiawaye, which sprouted anarchically on former swamp land. In 2010, the rainfall reached the highest levels in thirty years. The goal of my photo-story is to show the everyday lives of people who sur...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

The city of Gabès in southern Tunisia is the world’s only oasis located on the seashore. It was a flourishing agricultural and commercial centre in ancient times, as well as under Carthaginian, Byzantine and Arab domination. Nowadays the large phosphate factory in Gabès has turned the oasis...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

Migratory movements have produced “no man’s lands” throughout history, but never more than today, due to worldwide demographic expansion and growing urban sprawl. My photos show some of these residual zones, documenting their past and questioning their future: Tiberias in Israel, ...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

One has to have experienced oppression in order to understand and savour the real meaning of freedom of speech. On 14 January 2011 and the following days, I took photos of my fellow citizens who were demanding democracy in downtown Tunis, in front of the Ministry of the Interior. Althoug...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

The Sahara desert is not the old Western fantasy fuelled by the tourist industry and photography – a kind of archaic pause in the mad race toward modernity, a mausoleum, a myth drained of any substance. In fact, it is a human and ecological reality tied to the future of the world, it is a s...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

In this video, I re-animated the ancient deity Anubis, god of the underworld, and made him move through the declining urban architecture and environment of Cairo. The character probes the city and its inhabitants with their social and political obsessions.

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

On 2 February I started taking pictures of the people’s uprising in Egypt. These images show different formations of the masses, how from far away the people in the masses do not seem to have an individuality. These are compared with the images of close-ups of people to show that these ma...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

This is a series on the Ghanaian slum Agbogbloshie. People and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives. The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year. In Europe, only 25% of this ty...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

After twelve years among the diaspora in Portugal, I visited Luanda, my home town. My work questions the sustainability of the world in which we live, paying special attention to the Angolan policies of exploitation of the natural richness of its soil, especially oil and diamonds. I develop...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

A few years ago I took pictures of strolling street vendors in Niamey. The negatives remained in a drawer until last January, when the self-immolation of a similar vendor set his own country afire, followed by the rest of the Arab world. So I reappropriated the negatives, cropping them in o...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

For one hundred years the Gécamines company has been operating copper mines in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After all these years, toxic waste have polluted the air and water, creating a veritable artificial desert. The inhabitants have little choice: either...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

I use drawings as a narrative language of expression. Empty Skies is a video animation inspired by the following poem: “I am walking alone without feats, as river water does./ Half crazy, I am. Is it not nearly enough for you?/ This madness rises out of my love and weeping/ I became a source...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

I decided to take pictures of children being taught how to plant trees, because a country’s youth is its future and there’s no future without reforestation. This series of explanatory photos shows how to prepare the future for tomorrow’s generations through the preservation of our ecosys...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

This place has its own special light. You’re never alone here, never lost. Everything seems charged with energy. Kraftwerk means “energy supplier” or “power station”. This piece is the poetic description of a basic, straightforward reality: there is a strong dialectic between humani...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

I write photographs so that I won’t forget. Things press in on me, things howl – I remember the war of 1998. And even today gunfire is still heard in Africa, houses still burn, and men fall beneath grey skies on the hillsides of Slaughterhouse Mountain. It is a long, torturous road. A she...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

Their lives are close to the sea, they go to the sea to communicate with God, they need God to sustain themselves, their faith and their beliefs. This project is about the traditional religious heritage of Mozambique, where the Zionists still preserve some ancient traditions in the south....

01.11.2011[ read full story ]

This work creates the history of the arrival of a stranger in a land where he has come to find himself and his love. He brings with him knowledge which is on one level enlightening but also burdening – a disability. The work subtly negotiates themes around xenophobia, with contrasting ima...

01.11.2011[ read full story ]