Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
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Arthur Rimbaud, FR
Photographies, 1883, Arthur Rimbaud © Musée Arthur Rimbaud, Ville de Charleville-Méziêres. Photo © Jeanchristophe Lett / Manifesta 13 Marseille.
These images testify to Rimbaud’s new existence. Bleached, faded and developed in dirty water, almost half of his seven surviving photographs shot during this 18-month experiment are self-portraits. Two show him on the terrace of his new home and in the banana garden, performing the essence of his new identity in self-imposed exile in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). They also show his close friend and Greek assistant Constantin Sotiro, the market of Harar and the mausoleum of Cheikh-Ubader. Through these images he comes to see himself as ‘literally an Other, a colonial artefact delivered in altered form back to France.’ ‘I became a skeleton, I’m scary,’ he wrote in a letter from Aden sent on his way to Marseille on the 30th of April 1891.