Murambi Technical School, Gicongoro.
One of the many places of memory in Rwanda. 27 000 people were massacred here.
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In the huge task of reconstruction in Rwanda after the genocide, every sector of the community has a role to play whether it be in the material or psychological reconstruction. Every sector, including artists. However, confronted with the enormity of what the genocide was, we are obliged to rethink the responses concerning forms of art or "social therapy" which might have been proposed in other circumstances: other circumstances, by definition, incomparable: genocide goes beyond everything. No science is adequate when faced with the scale of the social fracture existing in Rwanda after such an event. Art, some will say, is even less adequate.
There is thus a multiple challenge facing us. How is it possible that a memorial, a "work of art", render justice to the enormity of the event - genocide of the Tutsi population and the extermination of Hutu democrats. Secondly, how can the form of the "memorial sculpture" be dignified and yet communicate the enormity of the event to as many people as possible? Lastly, how can we integrate into its very creation a commemorative ceremony, a cathartic and pedagogic process involving as many people as possible, perhaps even the killers too?
