Exhibition Type: Digital Portfolios
Artist(s):
Mohamed Amin (1943-1996) (Kenya) Illustrated. Bob Geldof 1985.
Gideon Mendel
Ken Oosterbroek (1963-1994)
Anton Hammel (1969-2011)
Ruth Matau
Felix Dlangamandla
Sumaya Hisham
Construction of political myths: La Réunion
Venue: Tevolution Museum
Address: Long Street, Cape Town
Opening: 03 September 2026, 18:00
Exhibition Dates: 26 September 2026, 18:00
Description:
The construction of political myths
Presented by Tanguy Servat-Denuet
Servat’s contribution is a critical re-reading of a photographic corpus from the archives of the Prefecture of La Réunion, now held by the Historical Iconothèque of the Indian Ocean.
It takes as its starting point the 1965 ceremony, the first official commemoration of the tricentenary of the island’s occupation, conceived as a founding moment in the construction of a historical and political narrative of the territory. These images document an event that extends far beyond its ceremonial dimension. In 1965, the commemoration took place within a context of strong ideological tensions. On one side, communist movements denounced what they considered a racist and historically biased staging, accusing local institutions and the French state of imposing a narrative that erases part of La Réunion’s history.
On the other hand, right-wing political forces, particularly the RPR, used the commemoration as a tool of legitimisation, reinforcing the integration of the territory into a French national continuity, nearly twenty years after its departmentalisation in 1946. At the heart of this event lies the construction of a political myth: that of a dated and embodied origin, symbolically fixed to the year 1665 with the arrival of Étienne Regnault and a group of French sailors. This choice simplifies history by marginalising earlier presences, notably those documented in 1663 with the arrival of French individuals accompanied by Malagasy people, some of whom settled permanently and contributed to the island’s first lines of descent. Through this project, I aim to examine how institutional iconography participates in the construction, dissemination, and naturalisation of an official narrative. Implicitly, it reveals the blind spots, silences, and conflicts that shape the collective memory of La Réunion.
