NA CHINA!
2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
1:10:00 minutes
Marie Voignier
“Na China” means “In China” in Igbo language. Marie Voignier’s film NA CHINA! focuses on the African women communities who have emigrated to Guangzhou, in the southeast of China. Guangzhou is today a central hub for the production of low-cost products later sold on non-Western markets like African countries–clothes, shoes, telephones, tablets, toys, bags, wax fabrics or solar lamps. With a small capital or gathering family savings, thousands of young women and men from Africa, whether beginner entrepreneurs or experienced, have moved to Guangzhou looking for the opportunity to invest, make a fortune, train or start a business in connection with their home country. They have come from over thirty different countries at high risk, whether for fifteen years, a year or a month. For this project, Marie Voignier was interested in the Sino-African axis of this world economy. An economy that operates without Western countries and that bypasses their international regulations, their copyrights, their multilateral institutions like the WTO or the World Bank, and mostly operates out of any banking system. Since 2013, foreigners and more strongly Africans living in Guangzhou have indeed had to cope with increased police repression. Day after day, visa checks, counterfeits or drug search as well as administrative restrictions are multiplying. Overlooked and received poor media attention, many women (like Angeline and Mercy in the lm) live and work on a student visa, which is a serious violation of the law. Through the experiences of some women, NA CHINA! wants to highlight how women transgress and redene some cultural norms and gender assignments far from the western victimizing discourses on African women. The work also reflects on the complex globalized trade routes between Africa and China, underlining the geopolitical shifts and the decline of the Western influence in Africa.
Marie Voignier’s work presents a subtle criticism of the transitory status of action within the social and political elds. One could think of her work as a documentary practice when it could rather be considered as action, which, beyond its collective inscription, finds itself sent to the heart of the intimate, in a movement of individuation. Working on these boundaries, the artist pushes out the erring ways of a collective imagination.
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