Research into her personal French-Algerian history has drawn the artist’s attention to the monuments and statues that survived the Algerian War of Independence and were deemed significant enough by the French government to be dismantled, transported by sea and reassembled in France, mostly in rural villages with no direct link to the commemorated historic character or event. This process of ‘repatriation’ took place between 1962 and 1964. Extensive research revealed that very few textual and visual traces of this chapter of history have survived. Adopting a de-colonial approach, Kaiser aims to create new images and texts by re-imagining or re-fictionalising the un-existing, un-archived or lost image, and shooting a film essay based on both her findings and her exchange with a variety of experts.
Camille Kaiser is an artist and researcher based in Geneva. She graduated from the CCC Research-Based Master Programme at HEAD-Geneva in 2016.
