Galleria Continua Hosts an Exhibition of Leila Alaoui’s Works

Galleria Continua hosts an exhibition of works by late Leila Alaoui, who was tragically killed in Burkina Faso at the beginning of 2016. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Leila Alaoui Fondation and will be on display in the gallery’s spaces in Les Moulins.

“Je te pardonne” extends a hand to  the furthest extremes in its search for humanity. A humanity that is trapped by impossible frontiers in No Pasara, enriched by diversity in The Moroccans, hiding in a migratory crossroads in pursuit of a  cruelly inaccessible utopia in Crossings or lurking behind an assassin in the  eponymous text written by Yasmina Alaoui in which she imagines a letter written by her sister Leila fallen under the gunshots of terrorists in Burkina Faso, sacrificed to obscure extremism.

Alaoui who trained as a documentary  photographer also worked with video as  a medium to “explore the frontiers of  traditional historical narratives while avoiding clichés and victimization”. Leila’s subjects exist not only for the duration of a photograph but through their stories shared by the photographer. At once observer and participant she imagines a singular affinity with each individual.