Exhibition

[FINISHED] Lekha Singh - Women carry the world

From June 29, 2022 to January 2, 2023
The exhibition is now over.

Millions of women carry millions of pounds, across millions of miles on this planet. On their heads, backs, shoulders or arms, for centuries, they have carried children, transported firewood, water, food or mountains of cotton. Each of them carry a part of the world. Through this exhibition, revealing the spectacular burdens that weigh on them, photographer Lekha Singh pays tribute to these women.

The exhibition

Une femme vêtue d'un sari violet porte un contenant avec des vêtements sur sa tête. Elle monte des escaliers.

Les femmes portent le monde

© Lekha Singh

From June 29, 2022 to January 2, 2023, the Musée de l’Homme presents, in the Foyer Germaine Tillion, approximately fifty unpublished portraits of women who « carry the world », photographed during her travels.

These pictures, which transport us to lndia, Tanzania, Morocco, the United States, Mongolia China, Bhutan, Japan, Kenya, Rwanda and Namibia, celebrate women by representing them in all their strength and courage.

Femme qui porte une énorme amphore sur sa tête

Les femmes portent le monde

© Lekha Singh

Athletes, mothers, human mules, elderly women with the skin cracked by the heat, or teenage girls putting their budding strength to the test… According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, more than two billion people do not have direct access to drinking water, and the task of providing it falls on women and girls. Just in this decade alone, due to water scarcity and forest destruction, women have had to carry massive loads of water and firewood for double or triple the distance.

On the fields and village paths, market roads, and in our cities, women are united here by the physical and mental power that allow them to carry the weight of the world... with few people really aware of it. Through all of these portraits, it is a vibrant tribute that the Musée de l’Homme wishes to pay to these strong women.

Lekha Singh

Portrait de l'artiste Lekha Singh 

© D. Anderson

Lekha Singh is an American visual artist. Thanks to her international reputation, she has had the opportunity to travel all over the world, and to draw artistic inspiration from her travels.

She has exhibited her photographic work, since 2004, in American museums in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Her work can be found in permanent collections such as LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), ICP (the International Center of Photography, New York), Ruben Museum of Art (New York), among others. Singh has published her photographs in several books such as The Other Side of War, Women’s Stories of Survival & Hope.

She is also recognized for her documentaries : in 2012, she directed Beyond Right and Wrong : Stories of Justice and Forgiveness, a film that explores the role of forgiveness in the search for justice in Rwanda, Israel / Palestine, and Northern Ireland.

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