Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir

This second instalment of Cinema Commons, a research, programming and publishing project which explores how film articulates interpretive communities, fosters collective debate and devises proposals for common space, comprises three sessions with Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker Christian Nyampeta and Ècole du soir. The programme’s first session screens video works made by Nyampeta, while the second sets forth a dialogue on the creative processes of Ècole du soir. The third brings proceedings to a close with the screening of a film selected by the artist: Ousmane Sembène’s Guelwaar (1992). 

The work of Christian Nyampeta encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.

The New York-based artist from Rwanda uses art and museums to create spaces of encounter and common learning that predate colonial education models. Via popular culture frames of reference like comics, music and film, Nyampeta develops dynamics and spaces from which to build experiences which redress the wounds of diaspora and its consequences; further, his work recovers, makes visible and heals — through a pedagogical and artistic process — the social divides of the African people. With Ècole du soir he also works on creations without authorship and uses the counter-ethnographic legacy of novelist and film-maker Ousmane Sembène as a tool to deconstruct the Western view of Africa.

L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.  

This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.     

Framed inside the Museo Reina Sofía’s retrospective exhibition devoted to Maruja Mallo, this lecture delivered by Estrella de Diego draws attention to the impact of the artist’s return to Spain after her three-decade exile in Latin America.   

Committed to values of progress and renewal in the Second Republic, Mallo was forced into exile to Argentina with the outbreak of the Civil War and would not go back to Spain to settle definitively until 1965 — a return that was, ultimately, a second exile.  

Mallo saw out her prolific artistic trajectory with two impactful series: Moradores del vacío (Dwellers of the Void, 1968–1980) and Viajeros del éter (Ether Travelers, 1982), entering her most esoteric period in which she drew inspiration from her “levitational experiences” of crossing the Andes and sailing the Pacific. Her travels, both real and imaginary, became encounters with superhuman dimensions.  

In parallel, her public persona gained traction as she became a popular figure and a key representative of the Generation of ‘27 — the other members of which also started returning to Spain.  

This lecture is part of the Art and Exile series, which seeks to explore in greater depth one of the defining aspects of Maruja Mallo’s life and work: her experience of exile. An experience which for Mallo was twofold: the time she spent in the Americas and her complex return to Spain.    

Ángel Calvo Ulloa, curator of the exhibition Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain, engages in conversation with artist Juan Uslé (Santander, 1954) in the Museo’s Auditorium 400 to explore in greater depth the exhibition discourse of this anthological show spanning four decades of Uslé’s artistic career.  

The show casts light on the close relationship Uslé’s work bears to his life experiences, establishing connections between different stages and series which could ostensibly seem distant. Framed in this context, the conversation looks to explore the artist’s personal and professional journey: his memories, experiences of New York, his creative process, conception of painting, and ties with photography and film, and the cohesiveness and versatility that characterise his art. Key aspects for a more in-depth understanding of his artistic sphere.      

The conversation, moreover, spotlights the preparatory research process that has given rise to this exhibition to grant a better understanding of the curatorial criteria and decisions that have guided its development.  

These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.