From Timbuktu to Odessa, from Bamiyan to Gaza, armed conflicts make heritage a privileged target. Faced with these destructions, the exhibition Patrimoines en résistance questions the gestures of erasure, but also the forms of resistance and repair that make it possible to think about the future from the ruins.
In 2012, the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums, listed as UNESCO World Heritage, marked a historic turning point: for the first time, the deliberate annihilation of cultural monuments was classified as a war crime by the International Criminal Court. An unprecedented international mobilisation then set out to rebuild the destroyed sites, drawing on archaeological excavations and the memory of Malian artisans.
While war has always caused destruction, the beginning of the 21st century reveals an intensification and systematisation of attacks on cultural and natural heritage. The exhibition highlights this contemporary reality and poses an essential question: how does war reveal what is irreparably lost, while bringing forth the gestures of resistance that make future repair possible?
Through a remarkable ensemble of maps, texts, scale models, photographs, videos, contemporary works and digital replicas produced by Iconem, the exhibition offers a journey in three sequences. Conceived as a major reportage, it weaves a documented, visual and sensitive narrative, crossing the perspectives of architects, artists, researchers, field workers and witnesses.
The exhibition, by keeping a distance from the turmoil of the world, offers the visitor an indispensable moment of reflection in the face of the continuous flow of information.
The three sequences of the exhibition
Erasing
The destruction of heritage today takes many forms: dynamiting of emblematic sites, massive bombing of cities, deliberate abandonment of territories, looting and trafficking of cultural property. This erasure also affects ordinary and intangible heritage, through the displacement of populations, "cultural cleansing", urbicide, ruricide or ecocide. Far from the image of a "clean" war, these practices reveal the extent of the violence inflicted on places and societies.
Resisting
In the face of erasure, forms of resistance are emerging. Alongside major international institutions, NGOs, associations, and collectives of citizens, architects and researchers act to protect, document and transmit endangered heritage. On conflict grounds, every everyday gesture and every story becomes an act of resistance, contributing to preserving memory and supporting the physical and psychological survival of populations.
Repairing
In the 21st century, post-conflict repair goes beyond material reconstruction alone. It involves a comprehensive approach, attentive to territories, bodies and minds. To repair is also to "remake society", rebuild bonds, transmit knowledge and place memory at the heart of processes of renewal. Heritage then becomes an essential lever for imagining a shared future, in continuity with the past and the living.