melita, מלט −mlṭ, refuge

In partnership with Lab27 in Treviso, Spazju Kreattiv in Malta, MaltaBiennale.2024, the French Embassy in Malta, the French Institute of Palermo, Church in Palermo, the Palazzo Butera foundation in Palermo, the French Institute of Tunis, the Jaou festival Photo in Tunis.

This exhibition is part of the of the “Suite” program, at the initiative of the National Center for Visual Arts, with the support of ADAGP, Copie Privée and the Academy of Fine Arts.

The exhibition is supported by the French Institute as part of the IF Export 2024 call for projects.

The project benefits also support for contemporary documentary photography from Cnap and a grant to help with distribution from the Grand Est Region.

In partnership with the Strasbourg-Mediterranean festival.

Stimultania presents a traveling exhibition which combines different photographic sequences around the notions of refuge and habitation.

There are projects that are abandoned and that curl up, dried up. Projects that struggle in the dust of the roadsides; there are many of them, 72 (or maybe more).

There are others, sometimes – rarely – who carry us. Who surpass us. We cannot slow them down even if they make us out of breath. No need to ask ourselves if we believe in them: the question does not even come to our minds. And others believe in them too. Melita is one of these projects. A project that took Anne Immelé away, pushed her to take tickets to Malta, Palermo, Treviso, Tunis, once, several times. At Christmas with her family, then alone. With Hadia, Chamseddine and Habtom.

A project that pulled her into blinding days, stuck in the night of her lab. At every moment, she looked for the right place. When the time for images, the time for production or the time for circulation arrived. For each thing she was there, without reserve. Because, in these projects, we do not spare. There will have been six exhibitions, a church, a bastion. And this summer Stéphane Lagoutte stopped, surprised by a print stuck on a wall in Palermo…

Anne Immelé – and her project – show us stones that speak an unknown language but that comfort us. Their quiet immobility bears witness to trading posts and ships, to movement and freedom. They are the refuges and praises of daring sailors. Was Leo Africanus from Granada, Fez and Rome? From the East and the West? The traveler (but also diplomat, writer, geographer, merchant) begins Amin Maalouf's novel with these words: From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all languages, all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none.

Celine Duval
72 (projects to stop thinking about it) by Christophe Kihm and Elie During, Centre national Edition Art Image, 2004 / Léon l'Africain by Amin Maalouf, Jean-Claude Lattès editions, 1986

In the exhibition Melita, מלט−mlṭ, Refuge, Anne Immelé envisages the destiny of the Mediterranean by crossing the routes of commercial conquest of the Phoenicians with those of today's migrants. An exploration that crosses and alternates traces of the past and the vicissitudes of the present, opening spaces for reflection on the notions of refuge and hospitality. Rooted in the geopolitical complexity of the contemporary migratory condition, the photographs move away from reporting to offer a poetic trajectory, connecting the geographies of three countries: the caves and remains of Phoenician refuges in Malta, the quarries of Favignana in Sicily, the beaches of Tunisia where the dreams of refugees are sometimes buried.

Anne Immelé (born 1972 in Mulhouse, France) is a photographer and curator. Her photographs examine the myriad dimensions of our relationship with the territory: geographical, human and social, but also memorial and poetic. It is through publishing and display that her images enter into dialogue with each other, creating a terrain of confrontation. By this means, Anne Immelé renews a questioning of living together and the sharing of a common experience as evidenced by the book Jardin du Riesthal (Médiapop, 2022) dedicated to a workers' garden. She has participated in numerous exhibitions. Among them: Comme un souvenir, Fondation Fernet-Branca (2019), 50 years of French photography, Palais Royal (2020), Paysages Français, a photographic adventure at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (2017-2018), L'Atlas des Nuages, Fondation François Schneider (2018), Jardins du Riesthal at the Galerie Madé, Elles x Paris Photo (2022). A doctor of art, Anne Immelé works as an exhibition curator. She has developed a reflection on the spatialization of photography and on the medium of the exhibition itself. Her curatorial research follows a thesis for a Doctorate in Arts, defended at the University of Strasbourg and published under the title Constellations photographiques by Médiapop éditions. In 2013, she founded, with Jean-Yves Guénier, the BPM-Biennale de la photographie de Mulhouse, for which she is artistic director and curator of certain exhibitions. She also teaches at HEAR (Rhine University of the Arts).