In an attempt to reconstruct and fill the historical gaps relating to the official narrative of the Kenyan colonial period, with the exhibition State of Emergency – Harakati za Mau Mau kwa Haki, Usawa na Ardhi Yetu, curated by Salvatore Vitale, EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival presents from 10 April to 2 June in the spaces of Palazzo Madama - Civic Museum of Ancient Art, a fictional documentary project, created by photographer Max Pinckers in collaboration with Mau Mau veterans and Kenyans who survived the atrocities of the war. This is the first exhibition dedicated to the project, which with its extraordinary historical importance anticipates the richness of the festival program which from 2 May to 2 June brings to the city some of the most interesting examples of international photographic research.

State of Emergency – Harakati za Mau Mau kwa Haki, Usawa na Ardhi Yetu is an ongoing documentary project, which through live re-enactments or “demonstrations”, creates a new visualization of the struggle for independence from British colonial rule which took place in the 1950s and which, by showing the experiences of the past today, aims to speak to a future audience.

The project weaves together fragmentary archives, photographs of architectural and symbolic remains of the past, mass grave sites, demonstrations and testimonies of those who lived and survived the war. With colonial archives deliberately destroyed, hidden or manipulated, this project creates “imagined documents” to shed light on the blind spots of history, filling historical gaps.

In 2014, Max Pinckers was invited to the Archive of Modern Conflict in London, where he came across a collection of British propaganda material from the 1950s relating to the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya, which became the starting point of a long research on one of the most violent episodes of British colonial history.