“How to Represent the Unimaginable?”: Grada Kilomba, the Artist Behind the First French Memorial Dedicated to the Tutsi Genocide

Grada Kilomba, a Portuguese artist of Santomean and Angolan origin, has created "L'Archive," the first French memorial dedicated to the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. Installed on the banks of the Seine near Les Invalides in Paris, the monument consists of two black brass blocks inscribed with a text in French, English, Kinyarwanda, and Swahili, stating that over one million people were killed in 100 days in 1994. Commissioned by the French state and the City of Paris at the initiative of the association Ibuka France, the abstract work was chosen through an international artistic consultation process led by the Centre national des arts plastiques in 2023. Kilomba, known for her work on memory, collective trauma, and colonial violence, deliberately avoided figurative imagery to represent the unimaginable horror of genocide.

This memorial matters because it marks France's first official monument to the Tutsi genocide, a subject with which the country has a fraught history—President Emmanuel Macron only acknowledged France's "overwhelming responsibilities" in a 2021 speech in Kigali. The artwork's abstract, minimalist design stands in stark contrast to Paris's many heroic, masculine statues, offering a radical new form of public commemoration. Kilomba's work, which draws on her long career exploring cyclical violence and erased narratives, also highlights the role of artists in addressing society's most difficult themes without reproducing violence. The memorial is deeply shaped by encounters with survivors, making it a living site of memory and healing for the Rwandan diaspora and all who encounter it.