This solo-exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of Jan Banning’s work, featuring a selection of his most renowned series, including Bureaucratics, Comfort Women, Law & Order, Down and Out in the South, Red Utopia, and National Identities.
In addition, Fontana is proud to showcase work from his most recent series, Blood Bonds: Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda.
This powerful project explores a universal truth: every genocide eventually comes to an end. Survivors, the bereaved, perpetrators, and bystanders have no choice but to clear the ruins and try to live together again. But how do you do that when mutual distrust still smolders, and fear and hatred continue to glow beneath the surface? It requires a healing process that takes years—sometimes generations, even
In Blood Bonds Dutch artist Jan Banning and writer Dick Wittenberg have portrayed, in images and words, unlikely pairs: survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide alongside perpetrators who played a direct role in harming—often killing—their family members and loved ones. Individuals whom they have since forgiven and with whom they have reconciled: a rare and deeply moving phenomenon.