The April Rebellion: Photography and Memory in Nicaragua

La Rebelión de Abril: Fotografía y Memoria en Nicaragua

This bilingual exhibition looks at the presence of photography in the context of the 2018 civil protests in Nicaragua, and their aftermath. Photography is examined here as a means of documentation, and as a method for reflection. We foreground the manner in which photography interweaves with memory: understood in an active sense, as something that is present, instead of something that belongs to the past, and also as intrinsic to the struggle for justice. Formatted and distributed as a newspaper, it is to be shared, passed from hand to hand, unfolded, read, and disassembled; its pages displayed onto everyday streets and walls, or within a gallery, communal space, even within one’s home. It is intended to serve as a connective thread between Nicaraguan communities around the world, distributed via networks of friends. We are blocking online distribution to protect contributors, and to signal the continued repression and censorship within the country.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of the victims of governmental repression of the 2018 protests, to the political prisoners and all Nicaraguans who have been threatened, intimidated, and whose lives have been placed at risk for speaking in defence of their civil rights.

Please note that the text has been redacted to protect the identities of the contributors, where pseudonyms are not in use.

Read the curatorial text

Copies of ‘The April Rebellion’ are now in the collection of the V&A Museum library and The Photographers Gallery library in London, Lumenvisum in Hong Kong, the Magnum Foundation in New York, TEOR/ética in San José, Costa Rica and the Paulo Bruscky Archive in Recife, Brazil.

The exhibition was on view as part of the symposium “Visual Memory and the Art of Protest: Nicaragua” organised by HD at the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton (17-21 October 2022).