Elena Perlino
in Gaspé

EXHIBIT

Indian Time

On the Promenade Jacques-Cartier, between Jacques-Cartier (known as O’Hara) Point and Musée de la Gaspésie | Gaspé

Elena Perlino, France / Italy | elenaperlino.com

Elena Perlino carried out Indian Time during three visits to the Québec-Labrador border. Her photo series runs through the Innu and Naskapi communities, between Natashquan, Mani-Utenam, Matimekosh-Lac-John, Kawawachikamach and Sheshatshiu. She traveled through these spaces and these singular times – marked by ritual, by the passing of traditions, and by day-to-day life – so that we may enter into “nordicity,” and come as close as possible to those who inhabit it. Indian Time sets off to encounter landscapes and human stories that reveal the chaotic traces left by a recent history of Québec, like the mining companies carrying out operations in Matimekosh/Schefferville. Each image invites us to revisit the established order and to follow along with the artist’s sensitive gaze, above and beyond a documentary vision.

The project was undertaken in the context of Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie in 2017 with the support of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montreal, and will take the form of a book and a traveling exhibition in a part of North America (Montreal, Matimekosh/Schefferville) and in Europe. It is being presented in Gespeg so that the historical and essential links between the Innu and Naskapi communities and the Mi’gmaq of Gespeg may endure and be strengthened.

EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES

Indian Time

An Italian artist residing in Paris, Elena Perlino is a documentary photographer specializing in human-rights issues.

Her recent work has dealt with migration, human trafficking and gender issues, placing photography at the heart of crucial social and political concerns. She has presented several exhibitions in France and Italy, and was supported by Magnum Foundation in 2015, as well as by Open Society Foundations. A number of her books have been published: Pipeline, dealing with Nigerian trafficking in Italy, which appeared in 2014; Maktoub, on Islam in Italy, in 2017; and Paris Goutte d’Or, scheduled for 2018.

Entering the fragile places of chaos

CHAOS reflects on a planetary environment undergoing profound change. Affecting both towns and nature, chaos operates in a more muted way in jeopardized areas: northern aboriginal territories captured by Elena Perlino and Éli Laliberté; tourism in India, by Martin Parr; accelerated urbanization in Brooklyn studied by Mathilde Forest and Mathieu Gagnon; or in the Gaspé Peninsula, the marks of a long-gone mining operation or a railroad documented by Myriam Gaumond and Martin Becka. Together, they are all revealing of those threats that pervade the landscape and the existence of each one of us today.