<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/664/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/556/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/600/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/664/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/700/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/1500/1171/800/0/75/0/bf88330_298913-3335115.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="" seul"="" by="" naji="" kamouche="" (2003)."="" width="100%" height="auto">
A wall covered with door handles – none of which turn – and in the middle the neon word "Seul" ("alone" in French) flashes. In a mock-up of a child's bedroom, with a cupboard piled high with court documents, you have to get close and put on the headphones to hear – on a loop – the question a judge once asked the little boy: "What time did your father come to your room?"
From September 7 to 23 at the Galerie Marguerite Milin, in Paris's 3rd arrondissement, these works by visual artists Naji Kamouche and Camille Sart will echo those of a dozen other artists, created on a rare, even unprecedented theme in contemporary art:
child sexual abuse.
The exhibition is called "Qui ne dit mot..." in reference to the adage "Qui ne dit mot consent" ("Silence Means Consent") and it is subtitled "Une Victoire contre le Silence" ("A Victory Over Silence"). The word "victory" is not too strong: The contemporary art curator behind the project, Marie Deparis-Yafil, had to endure eight years of rejections from dozens of galleries and museums before finally succeeding in putting it together.
A renowned curator with over 40 exhibitions to her credit, Deparis-Yafil – who has been in charge of the Shoah Memorial for the past two years – criticized the art world's "hypocrisy." "All the institutions claim to be at the cutting edge of commitment, increasing the number of exhibitions on difficult themes such as violence against women, racism, war... But nobody wants to talk about incest." And yet, she said, she had "no trouble" finding many works "that are in a symbolic register, embodying the context or suffering – certainly not the acts themselves or child pornography."
The only work to assume a head-on stance is an image by Cuban photographer Erik Ravelo Suarez, former director of Fabrica, the art center of clothing brand Benetton in Treviso, Italy. Taken from his series "The Untouchables" (2013), it depicts a little boy crucified on the back of a priest. The photograph has already made the rounds the world over, but only in the press and on social media. "Pedophilia in the church has scared off galleries and museums," said the artist. "The paradox is that I've never had so many positive reactions to a work, from people who recognized their suffering in it."
Gallery owner Marguerite Milin said she "didn't hesitate" when Deparis-Yafil presented her project to her a year ago. What convinced her was "the massive scale of this violence," she said, citing figures of one child victim in 10. "We're all impacted. Like everyone else, I know victims. I think the rejections Marie received are linked to how sadly common this is. There's the fear of bringing out secrets buried in families."
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