Empires, by their very nature, embody and formalise difference, both between metropolis / colony and colonial subjects. Imperial imaginary floods popular culture. Gender categories were one kind of bio-logic “new tradition” European colonialism institutionalized in most of African cultures. But there is significant religious and linguistic evidence that before colonisation social practices (division of labor, profession, monarchical structures) where not gendered. Infantilisation of women as part of Western patriarchal system was also exported with the colonisation of the mind, configuring a state of vulnerability, making the path of dependency propitious. Can we assume social relations in all societies are organised around biological sexual difference? Beauty canon, modernity, stereotypes… Decolonize feminism questioning the Eurocentric rational theoretical frameworks that construct gender categories in a universalistic manner.

Winner of the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook of the Year award 2020