Rivesaltes Memorial
Objects – the archeology of loss
with Ellen Turner Hall
Only fragments survive – a shard of pottery, a rusted electric switch, a twisted strand of barbed wire – to witness the passage of more than 60,000 people interned in the Camp of Rivesaltes between 1942 and 1966.
This year’s exhibition, called simply Objects, marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of the museum to honour the memory of Spanish Republicans, Jews and Gypsies as well as prisoners from colonial wars.
Under the director Céline Sala-Pons, the memorial’s mission is to transmit the lessons of history to inform the choices of the present.
Over the past 25 years the artist Nicole Bergé has combed the grounds of the camp collecting whatever was left behind. Her assemblages of fragments become witnesses to the life of the camp. In a wall of wooden crates full of miscellaneous rejects, a single spot of colour – red and yellow flowers on an enamel pot – speaks out to us of hope.
Particularly poetic is a display of bottle bases lit from beneath to reveal images of a lone walker or a leafless branch.
The second part of the exhibition is devoted to a contemporary interpretation of the writing and artwork of internees: a school notebook dated 18.11.1941, a watercolour of a visit to the camp barber, a print of three companions outside the barracks. The exhibition is the fruit of the collaboration of ten local citizens under the guidance of Claire Muchir of the museum of Collioure and Claude Faber of the Oxymore bookshop in Port Vendres to present their impressions. Some of their conclusions:
“I don’t remember my dead. I recall the living.”
“It is the collision of time and anger.”
“Reality is cobbled together like a makeshift shelter.”
In 2025 as we continue to be potential “objects” of despotism, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, this exhibition serves as a reminder of our common humanity.
Objets de memoires
runs from 15 march 2025 to 20 February 2026. For details: info@memorialcamprivesaltes.fr
Friday 27th September 201