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Arts Intel Report

Mosquito Coast by Guillaume Bonn

Guillaume Bonn, People washing their clothes in the swimming pool of The Grande, a once luxurious hotel in Beira, Mozambique, 2013.

7000-845 Evora, Portugal

Growing up in Kenya, like his father and grandfather had before him, Guillaume Bonn witnessed his country and those around it changing rapidly. Photographing what he saw—wars in Sudan; the displacement of communities in Tanzania; ethnic violence in Rwanda—he became a regular contributor to The New York Times and Vanity Fair. In his most recent book, Paradise Inc., published in April, Bonn examines the human–wildlife conflict and the impact that urban landscapes have had on ancestral traditions. With this exhibition in Évora, Portugal, Bonn now focuses on the built environment itself. Traveling along the East African coast, he documented the region’s transformations and noted how its architecture embodies conflict, disease, and the climate crisis. Titled “Mosquito Coast,” the show uses malaria as a metaphor for the illness that has spread, like colonialism, across the continent and left its painful, destructive mark. —Jeanne Malle