Georges SENGA

CETTE MAISON N'EST PAS À VENDRE ET À VENDRE

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My project speaks of value; in this value I see memory in relation to situations. And these situations refer to the urge to keep or to lose something. The topic for this show first caught my attention when my family home was in the situation of conflicted inheritance in 2009-2010. After that I started taking photographs of the houses in my neighborhood.

In Africa people talk publicly about conflicts of family heritage and although you find those conflicts anywhere in the world they are not presented in the same way as in Africa.

Concerning our family home it was only a short period of time when it was happing, a few family men wanted to sell the house, while the others did not want that at all. The part of the family who were against the sale put great writing with oil paint on the house »this house is not for sale.« This message would be a warning for anyone who would like to interact to buy the house. This was the moment when I started to ask myself, why do people need to write this on their houses publicly…Is it about respect for the memory of the person who leaves you this house as heritage

The houses I have photographed are familiar to me because they are in the neighborhood where I grew up, in the commune of Katuba.

The project is called »this house is not for sale and for sale.« People have two kinds of opinions, some of them agree with selling their houses and some of them disagree: I chose Brazil because I also wanted to explore another way to represent the conflict of heritages.

 

In DR Congo I photographed the photos of the houses that are not for sale from inside, because seeing the objects from the inside made me get closer to the story of the house and the memory of the owner from who the present owners got the house.

The houses from Brazil are in Praia Grande and they are disappearing because of new constructions of high buildings. The houses »for sale« have memory and history but at the same time they are on view for sale; in that way they are losing their history and memory.

 

I decided to photograph objects in the areas of those houses to reconstitute the history and the memory of the houses. The object and the houses are on view for people, but the objects are for free and the houses are for sale.

My work is, mainly about the issues of identity, heritage, and history. All of these three issues are connected to an idea of »memory« – the memory of who we are, what we have, and where we come from. These objects that are inside the houses have personal and material value so losing a house is considered losing the memory of the family.

The objects inside the houses show the existence of a life and tell the stories of different periods of the house. The objects photographed in the exterior reconstruct the daily life of the houses. When I saw those objects on the street I thought how now they are in view to everyone and they use to be intimate.

The photos are taken between the end of 2014 and the end of 2016, I have visited the houses again in order to take photos of the interior of the house.