The exhibition Rozil naked city by Yeshen Gunnoo celebrates his 35th career. The exhibition is visible from today, Monday November 18 until Sunday November 24 at the Plaza Boulevard shopping center in Rose-Hill.
If we know Yeshen Gunnoo especially for his watercolors of Port-Louis, to mark this anniversary, he set up his easel in Rose-Hill. A city that holds a special place in his heart, because he studied there.
In around thirty paintings, a whole section of Yeshen Gunnoo’s life takes shape.“In the late 1970s, I attended Eden College in Rose-Hill. I have lots of memories of this city. I am nostalgic for those times. Rose-Hill has a historical character, a culture different from other cities”explains the artist.
His memory is full of anecdotes from his college years. “There is a painting from the Michel boutique. With my friends from Newton College, that’s where we kept our bags to play hooky, before going to Balfour or to the cinema”he explains.
He remembers the Notre Dame des Victoires pastry shop, where he went “early before school, to buy yesterday’s cakes for 5 – 10 cents instead of 50 cents. At the time there were no regular buses. I lived in Mon Désert Alma. With friends, we had to leave the house at 6 a.m. Arriving in Rose-Hill, we went to the Notre Dame de Lourdes church. As we were hungry, we queued to take the host until one day, we were made to understand that we had to take baptism for that”.
He also remembers the time when Arab Town still existed. *“That’s where we went to buy bread and chili cakes. I also knew the dhobi who washed clothes in the Ebony River. They were not women but men.”*Yeshen Gunnoo’s anecdotes are as colorful as his paintings. Often, his watercolors represent a marriage of his reminiscences and the present time. “Some buildings have disappeared, like the Paris cinema, others have become old and dilapidated, but they are part of the history of Rose-Hill”he explains.
