VERDIER Elliott

Reaching for Dawn

France

2021

Of the bloody civil war (1989-2003) that decimated Liberia, its population does not speak. No proper memorial has been built, no day is dedicated to commemoration. The country, still held by several protagonists of the carnage, refuses to condemn its perpetrators. This deafening silence, that resonates internationally, denies any possibility of social recognition or collective memory of the massacres, immu-ring Liberia in an endless feeling of abandonment and drowsy resignation. The trauma carved into the population’s flesh is crystallized in the society’s weak foundations, still imbued with an unsound America-nism, and bleeds onto a new generation with a hazy future. Liberia is suffering a long, anonymous night, a decaying sludge of existence miring pain and its innate loneliness. This photographic and audio work explores the mechanisms of its resilience and the invisible resorts of psychic trauma in war.

With the support of Picto and Angle Atelier

 

 

In partnership with Agnès B 

 

About the artist

Born in 1992, Elliott VERDIER is driven by themes such as memory, generational transmission and resilience. In 2017, he completed his first long term project, “A Shaded Path”, in Kyrgyzstan. He was helped by the CNAP in 2019 for his second major project “Reaching for Dawn”, in Liberia. Elliott Verdier also collaborates with the press, especially with the New York Times or M le magazine du Monde.