Louisiana presents Richard Mosse: harrowing testimony to the war in Congo in 'The Enclave' exhibition

The exhibition Richard Mosse – The Enclave at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents harrowing testimony to the war in Congo, a conflict so brutal and complex that it eludes representation. With the video work The Enclave, 2013, Irish artist Richard Mosse reinterprets war photography by combining documentary and artistic strategies.

Over a period of three years Richard Mosse (b. 1980) has travelled in the eastern Congo, where he has infiltrated armed rebel groups in a war zone in the grip of violent ethnic conflicts, massacres and systematic sexual violence. The video installation The Enclave is the result of Mosse’s attempt to develop a new documentary method for representing a forgotten African tragedy that has cost more than 5.4 million people their lives since 1998.

The central device in Mosse’s work is the use of a special military surveillance film type (Kodak Aerochrome, 
16 mm film), which registers the invisible spectrum of infra-red light. The film was used by the American military from the early 1940s to expose camouflage, but in Mosse’s work its aesthetic qualities are exploited. The film transforms the green colour of the landscape into a shocking pink and renders the jungle war zone in an unreal psychedelic glow. River valleys, forest and cliff faces in bright red shades form an emotionally charged landscape suffused by the horrors of war. In Mosse’s own words the film is an attempt to combine “art's potential to represent narratives so painful that they exist beyond language, and photography's capacity to document specific tragedies and communicate them to the world”.

The Enclave gives us disorienting and shattering insight into the notoriously fragmented eastern Congo. 
The work portrays the life of the soldiers and civilians fleeing from ethnic violence in images which with their unashamed aestheticizing turn away from the conventional realism of war photography and shed new light 
on a neglected conflict. 



The Enclave has earlier been shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013, where Mosse represented Ireland in the country’s national pavilion. In 2014 Mosse was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for the project.

The exhibition is being shown in the first two galleries in the west wing of the museum. In the first gallery we see a selection of Mosse’s photographs from Congo. The second presents the main work, the video installation The Enclave, which consists of six video screens with constantly shifting emotionally and sensorily charged images.



Richard Mosse


Richard Mosse was born in 1980 in Ireland and today lives in New York. He graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London and the Yale School of Art. Mosse is no classic studio artist, but works with a documentary approach that takes him to places where war photographers typically work. On several journeys to Congo in 2010-11 he created the photo series Infra, which documents paramilitary groups in areas that have not been covered by journalists. In 2012-13 Mosse returned to Kivu Province in eastern Congo with the film-maker Trevor Tweeten and the musician Ben Frost to shoot scenes for the video work The Enclave.



Artist Talk and Louisiana Lectures


In connection with the exhibition Louisiana is mounting a number of events that shed light on the conflict in Congo in a series of historical and social perspectives. A group of Louisiana Lectures will for example deal with the Belgian colonial regime (1885-1960), which was one of the historical preconditions of the war and which is portrayed in Joseph Conrad’s literary journey up the Congo River in the classic novella Heart of Darkness (1899/1902). They will also elucidate the complex political, cultural and economic backgrounds for the war today, for instance via eyewitness accounts by journalists who have reported from Congo.

Artist Talk with Richard Mosse


Thursday 5.2., 18:30 – in English 
Richard Mosse talks about his work with The Enclave, which has been created as a result of a succession of journeys in the war-torn eastern Congo. Mosse will introduce the scenes presented in the video-work and will share his considerations in approaching the war from an artistic perspective. The Artist Talk is in English and will be chaired by curator Marie Laurberg. 
Admission free to the museum’s visitors. Seating can be booked at www.louisiana.dk. Charge DKK 10.



Louisiana Lecture: Images of War – Curator Marie Laurberg


Wednesday 18.2., 19:30
Curator Marie Laurberg lectures on how Richard Mosse’s war portrayals resonate with other artists who 
have worked with art as historical testimony; from Goya’s Disasters of War through Picasso’s Guernica to contemporary artists who work in the crossfield between art and documentarism. 
Admission free to the museum’s visitors. Seating can be booked at www.louisiana.dk. Charge DKK 10.



Louisiana Lecture: Heart of Darkness – Introduction by Jakob Ladegaard and reading by Jens Albinus


Wednesday 25.3., 19:30
Actor Jens Albinus reads from Joseph Conrad’s classic novella from the colonial Congo, Heart of Darkness. 
The novella and its historic importance is introduced by Jakob Ladegaard, Associate Professor of Literature, Aarhus University.
Admission free to the museum’s visitors. Seating can be booked at www.louisiana.dk. Charge DKK 10.



Louisiana Lecture: Congo Danger Zone 5 – Øjvind Kyrø


Wednesday 29.4., 19:30
Journalist and writer Øjvind Kyrø has travelled extensively in Congo as a news reporter. In this lecture he discusses the history of Congo and the mixture of mining, ethnic conflicts and postcolonial schism that underlies the war. 
Admission free to the museum’s visitors. Seating can be booked at www.louisiana.dk. Charge DKK 10. 

Free posters and Louisiana Magasin no. 41, 2014
 Two posters produced especially for the public – with Danish and English text – are available in the exhibition. 
In addition Louisiana Magasin no. 41, 2014, features the article “Den usynlige krig – et rystende vidnesbyrd fra det splittede Congo” (The invisible war – harrowing testimony from the fragmented Congo) by curator Marie Laurberg. (In Danish).

Further information on the exhibition Richard Mosse – The Enclave is available from curator Marie 
Laurberg or the undersigned.

A log-in for press photos can be ordered from the undersigned either by 
e-mail press@louisiana.dk or M: +45 2858 5052.

Museum opening hours: Tuesday - Friday 11:00-22:00, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays 11:00-18:00. Mondays closed.

Louisiana website: www.louisiana.dk

Louisiana Channel: http://channel.louisiana.dk