From January to May 2014, Francois Beaurain wandered the streets of Monrovia and created surprising animated images of the people and places he visited. This first-of-its-kind travel diary gives a fresh and poetic look at the country with one of the worst’s reputation on earth.
Francois Beaurain
“My goal was to find a new medium to depict a place that is always associated with negative images. This problem is recurrent to Africa in general but even more relevant in Liberia. The war is over from than ten years now but most of the stories featuring this country are still linked to the child soldiers as if the country was still a war zone. I wanted to show the routine, the daily life of normal people, to show the exact opposite of the images usually associated with Liberia. Because gifs can be repeated endlessly, they’re the ideal medium to describe this routine.”
The series include 53 gifs in total, all available up to 1920 pixels (full HD) and as a 7’30” full HD video. Monrovia animated has been exhibited worldwide and is currently part of Making Africa exhibition by Vitra Design Museum and Gugenheim Bilbao.
