Hélène Amouzou’s story is hard to stomach. She was forced to flee her home country, Togo, in 1992, as years of political turbulence erupted into protests and violence. Her husband’s political affiliations put them in danger – they, like hundreds of thousands of Togolese, ended up in Benin, Toga’s eastern neighbour. From there, the couple and their infant daughter went to Germany to seek asylum, but soon after their arrival, found their name on a deportation list. When Amouzou’s husband went to attend a registration appointment, he never returned. Amouzou and her young daughter went into hiding.
Amouzou eventually returned to Benin to search for her husband, not realising the German government had sent him back to Togo. In the autumn of 1997, she decided to return to Europe, but this time to Brussels. She began again, building a life from scratch, without her husband. But for almost two decades, Amouzou lived without any official status – that hellish loop that forces immigrants to live in intolerable conditions, tormented by bureaucracy. She eventually became a Belgian citizen in 2015.
Amouzou took photographs throughout. In a small but sublime solo show at Autograph in London, aptly titled Voyages, we see her becoming and growing as an artist, going from her first camera, a classic 35mm Canon AE-1, and later a medium format Rolleicord.
Voyages is focused around a series of self-portraits taken in the decrepit, abandoned attic of the building Amouzou lived in, in the Molenbeek area of Brussels, from 2007 to 2011. In many, Amouzou is barely there – a ghostly blur, the result of experimenting with long exposures of more than a minute, while she moved around in the frame. These are self-portraits that all but obliterate the self, reducing it to only a thin image on a peeling wall. In this cold and uninviting space, Amouzou drifts in and out of the frame, clothed and nude, always alone, save for a suitcase. Unwittingly, her self-portraits are reminiscent of Francesca Woodman’s, though Amouzou was not aware of Woodman when she started. Yet they share a sensibility: in a world that didn’t see them, both are trying to figure out whether they are really there or not.
The exhibition spans 15 years of Amouzou’s life, but time slips away – lost or stolen? – in the photographs. Amouzou is still in the attic, with the same symbolic suitcase, the bag that is always packed and ready should she need to leave at short notice once again. In a pair of pictures, also blown up to larger-than-life size, the artist sits on top of her suitcase, fixing the camera with a deep stare. In the next picture, the identical scene appears – but Amouzou is gone. It is a devastating image that lets you into her despair. It is like a scream, piercing but silent.
“Photography has helped me,” Amouzou says, “and continues to help me – to escape, to think about something other than my everyday life.” In a more recent self-portrait, shot in colour, she appears in the attic again – but this time resplendent in traditional Togolese dress, seated on a coral-hued chaise longue, her whole figure visible and in focus. It is no surprise to learn the photograph was taken after Amouzou gained citizenship. It is a statement about the reclamation of identity, about confidence, but it also shows Amouzou’s ability to shift to formal portraiture. It’s a world away from the earlier photographs.
The self-portraits, all exquisitely handprinted by Amouzou, represent a significant chapter in Amouzou’s life, moving from an atmosphere of stark oppression to jubilant self-exploration. The works perhaps begin and end with her life experiences, but ultimately shirk them off. Instead, they become lyrical expressions of instability, grief, loss and resilience.
There are glimpses, too, of the outside world beyond the privacy and safety of the attic – such as a clutch of photographs taken during a trip to Togo in 2011, when the artist was at last able to return to visit her mother after 20 years. In one image, a hand extends across the frame, towards a beach, where tents are pitched in the background. The ocean curls on the shore. Home is there – but it is still beyond reach, as flimsy as the canvas of these temporary structures, dwarfed by the infinity of the ocean.
Home cannot be grasped or held. Memories with loved ones cannot be remade. Amouzou tries to repair lost time with photography, in a solemn portrait with her mother. This woman, now elderly, is seated as her daughter, now a mother too, stands by her side. It is a formal portrait, not the typical image of the long-awaited reunion. The faces of two women are etched with the exile that has kept them apart. Their gaze is penetrating, hard to shake off, long after I’ve left the gallery.
In an interview with Bindi Vora, the exhibition curator, Amouzou says: “I look at my passport and identification cards and sometimes think, ‘All my life for this.’ I don’t think I could do this again.”
• Hélène Amouzou: Voyages is at Autograph, London, until 20 January
