À l'ombre des masques
Valéry Gaillard
2005 - 52 min - Digital vidéo - Couleur - France

Trocadero palace, summer 2005. The basements of the Museums of Man are in full bloom. Full of paperboards, masks and swaddled fetishes and above all full of dust, they are on the brink of moving Quay Branly. It's three floors upstairs, viewing these same masks and fetishes, that Picasso, Derain, Matisse and a few others started the revolution that shattered Modern Art.
Nowadays, in Africa, replicas are being made. From the rich collector to the rubberneck, we can find some for all tastes, all purses even in airports halls. African art has become smuggling merchandise or souvenirs for tourists.
Behind these masks, hidden behind could we say, grew up now for fifty years a great generation of artists. A new art, creative, powerful was born. In the same time that Africa started industrialization
and emancipation from colonial governments, and was dreaming of unity, artists changed as well, mixing sacred and profane, travelling around the world and creating the art from today.