Exhibition: Reminiscences – Ghosts of Slavery

Description

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the law recognizing the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity, and the 20th anniversary of the house opening to the public, the Maison de l’Armateur welcomes two artists from worlds sometimes described as irreconcilable. Emmanuelle Gall and Ari Hamot set out to “haunt” the house—awakening and revealing the memory of this site, a witness to the slave trade in Le Havre.

In the early 19th century, Martin-Pierre Foäche acquired this house on the Quai de l’Île thanks to a fortune built on the exploitation of thousands of men and women deported from Africa. Shipowners, traders, and plantation owners in Saint-Domingue, Martin-Pierre and his brother Stanislas—an ancestor of Ari Hamot—took over their father’s enterprise, whose prosperity is now reflected in the museum. On December 15, 1822, the lady of the house received at her table the owner of Mondésir Lacascade—the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Emmanuelle Gall, who was then enslaved in Guadeloupe. Two centuries later, the artists symbolically inhabit the rooms, cupboards, drawers, and display cases of the Maison de l’Armateur. Archives, documents, images, collages, embroidery, sculptures… forms and media enter into dialogue to make a suppressed or erased past tangible, and to honor lives that were rendered invisible and sacrificed. An invitation to collectively rethink the history of colonial slavery and its echoes in contemporary society.

Emmanuelle Gall and Ari Hamot live and work in Marseille. One is a writer and visual artist, the other a performer and scenographer. Following her participation in the Rouen chapter of the trilogy Slavery, Norman Memories in 2023, Emmanuelle Gall was invited to conceive a project for the Maison de l’Armateur. She chose to share this human and artistic experience with Ari Hamot—an unprecedented collaboration combining individual and jointly created works, culminating in a performative tour of the Maison de l’Armateur during the European Heritage Days 2026.