A questioning of the invisible and the hidden

for his first solo exhibition in Africa at the Cécile Fakhoury Gallery, Roméo Mivekannin uses an eloquent plastic quotation process. From one work to the next, the compositions of the canvases are in constant dialogue with a complex visual history made of direct references to classical painting and to the images of Épinal that defined the representation of blacks in 19th century Europe. Faced with the inability to identify himself with these images and to establish a filiation with these narratives of history, Roméo Mivekannin inserts himself into these regimes of representation, substituting his own portrait for those of the original black characters. The repeated appearance of the artist’s face, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes hidden in the crowds of extras, is disturbing.

The exhibition presents a dozen large-format works never before shown to the public. The artist draws his inspiration from photographic archives or iconic paintings emblematic of the history of Western art. From Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Slave Sale (1873) to Gustave Manet’s Olympia (1863), via the first photographic portraits of the colonial monarchies of the second half of the 19th century, Roméo Mivekannin focuses particularly on the ambiguous representations of black figures, sources of both fascination and fear, sometimes anonymised, eroticized or objectified and intended for the almost exclusive eye of a male and Euro-centric viewer.

Like an uncompromising assertion, repetition embodies his desire to reappropriate a visibility regime from which he had until then been excluded. In Mivekannin’s work, the act of representation is thus an intimate ritual of accession to identity. Each work has its own historical time. In his works, Roméo Mivekannin thus questions the invisible and the hidden. He brings to light the workings of representation that carry the systems of domination and introduces a subtle critique, on the borderline between rewriting a collective memory and repairing a personal identity fracture.

Born in Bouaké (Ivory Coast) in 1986, Roméo Mivekannin lives and works between Toulouse (France) and Cotonou (Benin). At the crossroads of inherited tradition and the contemporary world, Roméo Mivekannin integrates his creations within an ancestral temporality, making his own rituals, echoing the voodoo cosmology, very present in Benin. In the image of an initiation rite, the artist dips the sheets that will compose the background of his works in different baths of ritual solutions, elixir baths, whose composition is known only to him. Then comes the time of painting. In the voodoo tradition,” explains the artist, “each god corresponds to a deceased ancestor. When one wears the mask of one of these gods, of a person who has lived, it is an act of liberation”. Some of them having been buried in certain places of the world, related to the history of colonization. The proper time of these sheets, themselves inherited and worn out, is then mixed with the temporalities evoked by the subjects of his paintings. Memory and time thus become the very matter of his works, their technique.

Roméo Mivekannin

Cécile Fakhoury

Contemporary Art Exhibition

From September 18, 2020 to November 28, 2020

Boulevard Latrille entre Sodemi et Immeuble Carbone, Boulevard des Martyrs

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

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At the beginning is a collection of sensitive materials, images, textures, shapes, colours that have for Vincent Michéa the dual power of symbols. First, sensitive materials that appeal to the senses: the crumpled, matte gold of Kubor’s wrapping paper that squeaks in your ear when you open it; the immaculate, shiny surface of photographic prints that invites you to grasp it with your hand full at the risk of leaving a few fingerprints; the infinitely varied pointillist weave that twists the viewer’s eye. From painting to photomontage, Vincent Michéa has always worked hand-to-hand with materials, in an intimate relationship with the plastic objects that the artist always chooses for what they evoke for him. Thus, these sensitive materials also appeal to memory. The photos that are at the origin of the works are as much those taken by Vincent Michéa as those he borrows from others, but all have in common the fact that they form a pantheon of memories that can be accessed between the lines.

The artist’s passions thus constitute his primary sources of inspiration: in the early 1980s, a decisive encounter with Senegal and its capital, which we find in the series 100% Dakar (2014); his affection for a black art scene from the late 1970s to the committed creativity he evokes in Or série (2015); and Fatou, the artist’s wife and muse, the main character in the series Fatou Pompidou (2017) and Fatou New Look – Pompidou Remix (2020).

Working within these meaningful materials, Vincent Michéa becomes an image sculptor. “I cut, I slice, I carve, I incise, I shear, I lacerate, I amputate, I decapitate, I dismember…” he explains about his first photomontages. In his works, the artist maintains a multiple-voice dialogue with the history of the genre and its emblematic figures that have marked the history of art from the second half of the 20th century to the present day.

From the extravagant derision of Dada Raoul Hausman, John Hartfield and Hanna Höche, Vincent Michéa keeps and perpetuates, in a joyfully irreverent spirit, a posture of rejection of aesthetic conventions. Thus, cultures mix, materials mix, the low and the noble are reversed, evoking in a more contemporary way the works of Romare Bearden or Mickalene Thomas, for example. The graphic construction of the images is in line with the work of a Roman Cieslewicz and often remains subversive in its connection to the code of representation. From these aesthetic interactions is born a visual poetry that is characterized by its forms and which translates Michea’s committed vision of the world.

Untangling the knots of the image to untangle the detours of history; recomposing the image to recompose memory, keeping the significant elements to signify other imaginaries, such is the aesthetic project that has guided the artist in his relationship to photomontage for the past ten years. Vincent Michéa thus transposes spaces and plural temporalities onto a contemporary territory and invites us to immerse ourselves in the multiple dimensions of his creations. From then on, for those who want to follow the main graphic lines of the artist’s narrative, stand the proponents of a personal story whose scope remains undeniably universal.

A table, scissors, glue and pictures in profusion, that’s the photo editor’s arsenal. Using photomontage as an artistic practice to design images allows you to “back-pedal”. It also means being aware that photography is an art and doubting oneself to produce it through this technique alone. Photomontage suddenly appears as an evidence, as an act of utmost significance, perfectly contemporary, adapted to the current context of an incessant flow of all forms of visual and plastic information. Photomontage requires a certain mastery of memory. Far from being an iconoclastic activity, it is rather an “animism of images”, a “polytheism of vision”. Conceiving and making photomontages manually with simple and common tools is one of the most meaningful acts for a creator who would like to realize sensitive images loaded with extreme tensions.

Toi Seulement

Vincent Michéa ‘solo exhibition

20 March – 8 May 2020

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

Dakar – Senegal

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Often working on large formats, often on square canvases that are not unlike models of contemporary images, the artist mixes symbols, forms and materials to compose the strange scenes of a contemporary theatre in which hybrid animals and mysterious figures are the protagonists.

In a converted space, aiming at disturbing the visitor’s spatial landmarks, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye proposes a new series of paintings, works on paper and an immersive installation, as an extension of his reflections on the political and social landscape of our contemporary societies. In the manner of a visual fable, the artist depicts the story of a confrontation between characters wearing animal masks, whose thirst for power, selfishness and obscure motivations are reminiscent of a certain category of world rulers.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye installs this contemporary jungle in the heart of the Galerie Cécile Fakhoury space, inhabits it with threatening anthropomorphic allegories and takes the visitor deep into this hostile universe. Thus forcing us to look at the aberrations of our societies from the front and without any blush.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye urges us to reflect on our role in the construction of the world, on our share of individual responsibility, while making the creative gesture a privileged act of resilience in the face of the abyss. The artist takes an uncompromisingly poetic and ironic look at contemporary society and the evils that shake it.

Born in 1988 in Dakar, Senegal, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye lives and works in Grand Mbao, Senegal. Trained at the Ecole Nationale des Arts de Dakar from which he graduated in 2013, he develops a practice at the crossroads of drawing, painting and collage. The characters in Serigne Ibrahima Dieye’s paintings and installations are ideas to which the artist has given body and matter. They are visual allegories of the evils that are tearing 21st century societies apart, but not only: once on canvas, on paper, or embodied in wood, these ideas take on their autonomy and become the protagonists of a dramatic narrative whose interpretation is the responsibility of the spectators.

Paraboles d’un règne sauvage

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye

First solo exhibition

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

From March 14 to May 30, 2020

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“Local cultural institutions have adopted the month of February as the visual arts month, transforming Cape Town into a cultural hub”

The 8th edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) returns to the Cape Town Convention centre between 14th – 16th February.  As the largest contemporary art fair on the African continent, the ICTAF coalesces 107 exhibitors and amasses over 16 000 visitors. 

The fair is accompanied by a curated talks programme which brings together leading experts on a range of topics. Curator of the talks programme, Tumelo Mosaka elaborates, ‘The Talks program is very special for me as it is the space where dialogue about issues important in the art world can be engaged by various experts from within and outside the country. It offers an opportunity to introduce the public to some of the issues while also reflecting on others that might have been topical.’ He adds, ‘I’ve always approached the talks as a discursive platform aimed at broader dialogue about the state the arts field. For this year, we will explore arts philanthropy in Africa especially in light of all the new museums cropping up in Africa. Also the question of the role of museums has become a topical issue given issues around reparation and repatriation. Of course hearing from artists is always a treat, getting a glimpse into artists process as well as exploring the challenges of non-profit sector. So we have a lot to discuss that is important.’

For the first time this year, the fair will include a film programme; ART.DOC. Staged at Cape Town’s oldest cinema, The Labia Theatre, ART.DOC will showcase a selection of films including; Billy Monk – Shot in the dark (directed by Craig Cameron-Mackintosh), Sue Williamson, It’s a pleasure to meet you (directed by Sue Williamson) and Imagining Simon Stone (directed by Michaela Limberis). 

Running concurrently with the fair is a series of exciting exhibitions across the city; Materiality (group show) and This song is for… (Gabrielle Goliath) at the Iziko South African National Gallery, without a clear discernible image: Kevin Beasley at A4 Arts Foundation, stukkinne stories and The Royal House of Allure at blank projects, Carrie Mae Weems II Over Time at the Goodman Gallery as well as a Blue is the warmest colour at Bkhz studios’ pop-up exhibition space. 

As with many fairs across the world, the Cape Town Art Fair’s organising logic is centred around commercial interests; presenting an opportunity for established and emerging artists to attract new audiences and gain access to markets. Over and above this, it has the potential to initiate new and interesting conversations or to bring forth ideas and discourse into the general consciousness. A key example of this is the (re)emergence, contemplations and complications of notions of modernity and modernism(s). As part of its presentation, Stevenson Gallery will present Ernst Mancoba’s ink and watercolour work; Drawing. This inclusion of Mancoba feels very pertinent and salient because of course, Mancoba’s practice is instructive in explorations of modernity. Stevenson will also present Mawande Ka Zenzile, pre-empting his upcoming solo; Udludlilali, which will open on the 12th of March. 

Another artist to look out for is Francois-Xavier Gbré (France), who is represented by Cecile Fakhoury Gallery. Gbré’s work is an exploration and revisitation of histories through the landscape where the past is understood as “foreign and unfinished”. Gbré is one of ten artists selected as part of the Tomorrows/Today special segment alongside; Danica Lundy (Canada), Amanda Mushate (Zimbabwe), Andy Robert (Haiti), Fathi Hassan (Egypt), Ernesto Shikhani (Mozambique), Nnenna Okore (Australia), Gregory Olympio (Togo), Bonolo Kavula (South Africa) and Isabelle Grobler (South Africa).  Tomorrows/Today is a curated segment of the fair, which acknowledges emerging artists —those who have previously gone unrecognised and those who are at the early stages of their careers. This year, it is curated by Nkule Mabaso (Curator, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town) and Luigi Fassi (Artistic Director, MAN-Contemporary Art Museum, Nuoro, Italy).

Thandiwe Msebenzi is also exhibiting with SMITH. Msebenzi explains the concept behind her work; “Egwaveni is a game I played as a child with my friends, we would sing “egwaveni” and touch or gesture towards our vagina, which we referred to as the “gwava”. This is a game we played freely and openly on the streets. It became interesting when we played it around men, it intimidated them and in turn there was a strength we gained in that as young girls. The work is part of a bigger body of work that looks at the intersectonality of gender binaries, told through memories, experiences, and childhood games.”

Once again the city will vibrate and reverberate with art and art-related events during the long fair weekend.

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1-54 has carefully selected 20 leading galleries from 10 countries (Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and the United Kingdom) to exhibit at the third edition of the fair in Marrakech. The fair will showcase the work of more than 65 artists, both emerging and established, working in a wide variety of mediums and from a range of geographical locations comprising 20 countries.

1-54 Marrakech will be accompanied by 1-54 Forum, the fair’s extensive talks and events programme, which will include artist talks and panel discussions with international curators, artists and cultural producers, to be held at La Mamounia, ESAV and Le 18 in parallel to the fair. For the 2020 Marrakech edition, 1-54 Forum will be curated for the first time by independent art space, The Showroom, London. The project will be led by The Showroom’s curatorial team and takes its methodology from the organisation’s programme of engagement with its local north-west London community, Communal Knowledge. Entitled On focus: Communal Knowledge at Large, 1-54 Forum will explore the potential of that methodology to be translated to other contexts. Nurtured by the insightful contributions of local and international agents, 1-54 Forum will become a platform to interrogate multiple practices of socially engaged art, leading to the production of a new roadmap of organisational and institutional collective methodologies originated by this encounter between artists, activists, institutions and community organisers.

1-54 will also present a wide programme of bespoke events in partnership with Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Madeen (MACAAL), Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, Montresso* Art Foundation, Le 18, Comptoir des Mines Galerie and Institut Français, amongst others.

> Une aventure poétique, the first retrospective exhibition by Jacques Azéma at musée Yves Saint Laurent marrakech
> HAVE YOU SEEN A HORIZON LATELY?, a group exhibition curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi at Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL)
> IN-DISCIPLINE #3 at Montresso* Art Foundation
> Comptoir des Mines Galerie presenting two solo exhibitions by Mohamed Arejdal and Fatiha Zemmouri in their art space in the heart of Gueliz
> Hamdoullah ça va! a group show with Mohamed Bourouissa and four young artists, presented by Sonia Perrin at DaDa
> Alter Ego Uprisings at Dar Moulay Ali, Maison de la France à Marrakech, a group show with works by artists Amina Benbouchta, Deborah Benzaquen, Soumiya Jalal, Seloua Ejjennane, curated by Elisa Ganivet

Galleries participating at 1-54 Marrakech 2020

• Afikaris
• AFRONOVA GALLERY
• Eclectica Contemporary
• galerie 127
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury
• Galerie Nathalie Obadia
• Goodman Gallery
• GVCC
• Katharina Maria Raab
• L’Atelier 21
• Loft Art Gallery
• LouiSimone Guirandou
• Gallery MAGNIN-A
• Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art
• Nil Gallery
• Primo Marella Gallery
• So Art Gallery
• UBUNTU art gallery
• VOICE gallery
• WHATIFTHEWORLD

1-54 Marrakech is located at La Mamounia:

La Mamounia Palace
Avenue Bab Jdid
Marrakech 40040
Morocco

20 – 21 February: by invitation only

Saturday 22 February
11:00 – 19:00

Sunday 23 February
11:00 – 18:00

1-54 Marrakech is free and open to all

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Bringing together 45 galleries from 19 countries, 1-54 will be presenting 16 galleries from Africa and over 140 artists of both emerging and established profile. 15 galleries will be welcomed to the London fair for the first time including, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Claire Oliver Gallery, espace d’art contemporain 14N 61W, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Galleria Anna Marra, Guns & Rain, The Hole, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Luce Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Nil Gallery, Sakhile & Me, SMITH, Tabari Art Space and Ubuntu Art Gallery.

Building on the success of the expanded programme of non-profit Special Projects, 1-54 will once again present a number of collateral projects, including including Mary Sibande’s first solo exhibition in the UK, I Came Apart at the Seams presented in partnership with Somerset House running through the 7 January 2020. 1-54 is also proud to renew the partnership with the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF) to commission a large-scale installation in The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House.

Curated for the first time by curator Kerryn Greenberg, Head of International Collection Exhibitions at Tate, 1-54 FORUM returns over four afternoons. Dedicated to the late Nigerian curator Bisi Silva, the programme will convene leading cultural practitioners to discuss the questions at the core of Silva’s practice.

Full list of exhibitors

• 50 Golborne (London, United Kingdom)
• Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
• AFRONOVA GALLERY (Johannesburg, SouthAfrica)
• AGorgi (Tunis,Tunisia)
• Catinca Tabacaru Gallery (New York, USA)
• Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi,Kenya)
• Clare Oliver Gallery (New York, USA)
• Ed Cross Fine Art (London, United Kingdom)
• espace d’art contemporain 14N 61W (Fort de France, Martinique)
• Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France)
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire / Dakar, Senegal)
• Galerie Ernst Hilger (Vienna, Austria)
• Galleria Anna Marra (Rome, Italy)
• Gallery 1957 (Accra, Ghana)
• Gallery Nosco (Marseille, France)
• Guns & Rain (Johannesburg, South Africa)
• The Hole (New York, USA)
• HUBERTY & BREYNE GALLERY (Paris, France / Brussels, Belgium)
• Jack Bell Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• James Cohan (New York, USA)
• Kalashnikovv Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa)
• Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• L’Atelier 21 (Casablanca, Morocco)
• Lawrie Shabibi Gallery (Dubai, UAE)
• Loft Art Gallery (Casablanca, Morocco)
• Luce Gallery (Turin, Italy)
• MAGNIN-A (Paris, France)
• Mashrabia Gallery (Cairo, Egypt)
• Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, USA)
• Nil Gallery (Paris, France)
• October Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Primo Marella Gallery (Milan, Italy)
• Sakhile & Me (Frankfurt, Germany)
• Selma Feriani Gallery (Tunis, Tunisia)
• SMAC (Stellenbosch / Cape Town / Johannesburg, South Africa)
• SMITH (Cape Town, South Africa)
• SMO Contemporary Art (Lagos,Nigeria)
• Sulger-Buel Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Tabari Art Space (Dubai, UAE)
• TAFETA (London,United Kingdom)
• Tiwani Contemporary (London, United Kingdom)
• Ubuntu Art Gallery (Cairo, Egypt)
• Vigo Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• WHATIFTHEWORLD (Cape Town, South Africa)
• Yossi Milo Gallery (New York, USA)

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair 

3-6 October 2019, Somerset House

London Somerset HouseStrand, London WC2R 1LA

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Gallery 1957 presents long-awaited works by Thameur Mejri

Based in Accra and working internationally, Gallery 1957 is dedicated to contemporary art. With a curatorial focus on West Africa, the gallery presents a programme of exhibitions, installations and performances by the region’s most significant artists. Gallery 1957 works with artists currently bridging the gap between local and international practices, including Serge Attukwei Clottey, Jeremiah Quarshie, Yaw Owusu, Gerald Chukwuma, and Godfried Donkor. For 1-54 New York, Gallery 1957 presents works by the Tunisian artist Thameur Mejri, in addition to his solo exhibition at the gallery in Accra from March 28 to May 7 included. 

Thameur Mejri cites, like Paul Klee before him, the same influence of Tunisia and its rich landscape as the colour catalyst for his latest series, Eroded Grounds. The human body occupies a special place in the artist’s work, which sometimes evokes the slow appropriation of the artist and his image in Europe because of the spiritual transcendencies and the relationship between the image of man and the divine, highlighted by religious culture. This conquest of his own body, the acceptance of its limits and its purely carnal dimension has not always been shown in the different European societies and Mejri explores the way in which the Arab-Muslim world maintains a complex and conflictual relationship on the subject, a pretext for so many other refoulements.

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury presents photgraphs of François Xavier Gbré

Opened in September 2012 and active in Dakar since 2018, the gallery offers a new perspective on creativity and exceptional artistic diversity in West Africa. The gallery presents new works by François xavier Gbré, Dalila Dalleas Bouzar, and Jems Robert Koko Bi.

François-Xavier Gbré was born in Lille, France, in 1978. He lives and works in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He graduated with a degree in Photography from École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques de Montpellier in France. While engaging with time and geography, his work summons the language of architecture as a witness of memory and social changes. From remnants of colonial times to landscapes that are redefined by current events, François-Xavier Gbré explores territories and revisits history.

Richard Tattinger Gallery presents works by Jorge Mayet and Frances Goodman

Jorge Mayet’s sculptures and installations draw from his experiences living as a Cuban exile in Spain. Suspended in midair, his photorealistic floating landscapes and uprooted trees offer ethereal, dream-like visions of his homeland. The exposed roots of the trees serve as a metaphor for diaspora, questioning the function of homeland. Mayet’s technique expands upon the region’s local craft traditions and honors the mysticism of the Yoruba religion, which was proliferated in Latin America by the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Born in 1975 and based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Frances Goodman is today considered one of the country’s leading artists. Her working practice, which includes installation, photography, sculpture and sound installations, focuses primarily on women and contemporary notions of beauty and desire. Her interests lie in female identity and the anxieties that manifest and are cultivated from the bombardment of the media as well as societal expectations and pressures (both self -imposed and external).  Her work is featured in collections of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), South Africa; the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, USA; the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art; and the Chase Manhattan Collection, USA.

Perve Galeria presents a core of Ernesto Shikhani’s work before and after the independence of Mozambique

Perve galeria presents a core of artworks which emphasize, politically speaking, the interventional character of Ernesto Shikhani’s work before and after the independence of Mozambique. Perve Galeria present also works of Shikhani at Frieze New York in 2 section.

In an initial section, there will be art works in which became evident that the artist clearly tries to transmit a message against the Portuguese colonial regime and dictatorship, representing them, most of the time, through monstrous beings. In this context, the human figure is practically non-existent or appears distorted and brutally oppressed.

A second section will reflect the post-independence period, when the author often represents the human figure with disproportionate hands, fingers and heads. His work again has a strophe of political and social intervention that is strongly related to the civil war. Here the works frequently reveal two human figures linked by the same body representing a same people but in conflict with himself. This type of composition is mainly made on paper, as it reflects a time when there was a profound social and economic transformation in the country and materials such as canvas became a very rare and expensive thing.

Born in 1934, in the Marracuene District, Ernesto Shikhani was part of a prominent group of artists in Mozambique who played a key role in broadening aesthetic reciprocity across Africa, Europe, and the USA. He began to devote himself to sculpture with the Portuguese master Lobo Fernandes at Núcleo de Arte, in Maputo, Mozambique. His latest drawings and paintings show traces and colors sometimes aggressive but also vibrant and radiant. In 2004, Perve Galeria held a retrospective exhibition of his 40 years of painting and sculpture. Ernesto Shikhani died on 31 December 2010, in Maputo, Mozambique.

Anne De Villepoix Gallery presents Omar Ba

Born in 1977 in Senegal, Omar Ba lives and works in Dakar and Geneva. His paintings, produced using a variety of techniques and materials, represent political and social motifs open to multiple interpretations. His artistic vocabulary raises historical and timeless questions while formulating a wholly contemporary artistic message.  Omar Ba’s iconography features personal metaphors, ancestral references and hybrid figures. This combination of heterogeneous elements illustrates his desire to abolish boundaries and categories. Omar Ba is represented by Templon gallery in France and Switzerland.

Galerie Magnin-A proposes works by Fabrice Monteiro, Vincent Michéa, among others

MAGNIN-A is a contemporary art gallery created in 2009 in Paris by André Magnin and directed by Philippe Boutté, renowned experts in modern and contemporary African art. As a talent discoverer, the MAGNIN-A gallery represents established and emerging artists. The gallery works with passion and conviction to promote and disseminate artists at the most important international fairs and exhibitions.

Born in 1972 in Namur, Fabrice Monteiro grew up in Benin. After studying industrial engineering, he began a career as a model, an opportunity for him to make his first contact with the photographic medium. After passing behind the lens, his first experiences will naturally be in the world of fashion, but very quickly, he decides to tell another story.

He lives and works in Dakar. Fabrice Monteiro’s photography and works occupy a rich space that spans all genres: photo-reportage, fashion images and portraits blend and collide to better reveal a “mixed” universe in the artist’s image. With his new series of works, Monteiro makes fun of the clichés that people of colour still suffer from and the way they are represented in people’s imaginations or in advertising.

Vincent Michéa was born in 1963 in Figeac, France, he lives and works between Paris and Dakar. After graduating from ESAG in Paris, he left for Dakar in 1986 to work as a graphic designer. It was in 1987 that he first exhibited his work of paintings and photos at the National Gallery of Senegal. Following this exhibition, he worked as an assistant to Roman Cieslewicz until 1991. Encouraged by this renowned graphic designer, he invested himself in an intense activity of painting creations. Vincent Michéa is also co-founder of the 100% DAKAR label and collaborates within the DKR studio in the 90s. In 2007 and 2008, he led photomontage workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. Since 2008, with the painter Moulay Youssef Elkahfai, Vincent Michéa has been in charge of the silkscreen printing workshop at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Marrakech.

Espace D’art Contemporain 14N 61W presents works by Jean Ulrich Désert and photographs by Robert Charlotte

Jean-Ulrick Désert is a conceptual and visual artist born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Désert’s art works vary in form: public billboards, actions, paintings, site-specific sculpture, video and art objects. They emerge from a tradition of conceptual work engaged with social and cultural practices. Well known for his “Negerhosen2000” his provocative “Burqa Project” and his poetic “Goddess Projects” Désert has said his practice may be characterized as visualizing “conspicuous invisibility.” He has exhibited widely at venues such as The Brooklyn Museum, The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Grey Art Gallery NYU/Studio Museum of Harlem, Walker Art Center in the USA, la Cité Internationale des Arts in France, The Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Germany and in galleries and public venues as well in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Ghent, Brussels.

He is the recipient of awards, public commissions, private philanthropy, including Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Villa Waldberta-Munich, Kulturstiftung der Länder (Germany) and Cité des Arts (France). He received his degrees at Cooper Union and Columbia University (New York) and has been an invited lecturer and critic at universities in the United States (Princeton, Yale, Columbia), Germany (Humboldt University in Berlin) and in France (at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris). He also advises and teaches for Trans Art Institute (based in New York).

It is from a social point of view that Robert CHARLOTTE‘s photography is oriented in the form of photographic portraits. He systematically examines the behaviours, attitudes and expressions of social groups. Born in 1966 in Martinique, where he grew up and lives, Robert CHARLOTTE was very interested in the family album at an early age, which gave him both pleasure and a trigger. From 1986 to 1989, he was in Paris at a photography school.

He lived there for 10 years, works in an industrial photography studio. He will learn the issues of reporting, illustration, commissioning, artistic proposal, team collaboration and the loneliness of the moment of release. Back in Martinique, he became interested in painting, meeting, interacting with and photographing painters in their workshops. He is a contributor to several publications.

14N61W is a contemporary gallery located in Martinique. The gallery presents a range of artistic positions in all media, focusing and focused on contemporary art in the Caribbean and around the world, the authenticity, the presence, projection and reflection of its artists in the art they produce, leaving the audience enthusiastic, sometimes puzzled, but never indifferent. The program of espace d’art contemporain 14N61W, is fuelled with exhibitions and projects revolving around concerns about artistic creation in relation to today’s social, economical, political and global issues.

Afronova gallery presents photographs of John Liebenberg

John Liebenberg lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he is born in 1958. He was introduced to Namibia in 1976 when, together with his fellow conscripts he was sent to Ondangwa Air-force base near the border with Angola. He later returned to Namibia and in 1985 was appointed photographer for a new weekly, “The Namibian”. Following independence he and his family moved to Johannesburg, from where he covered the Angolan civil war as freelancer for Reuters. He is a senior and established news photographer whose work has been exhibited in Africa and Europe. His Namibian photographic collection documenting Swapo’s war of Liberation and the South African occupation is widely used by historians, researchers and film makers.

L’agence à paris presents works by Dominique Zinkpè

Dominique Zinkpè‘s works refer to his environment and the context in which he finds himself. Identity is the roots, the consciousness of coming from somewhere, the tree that does not hide the forest. It is the audacity to testify, to affirm one’s voice clearly and clearly, says the artist. His approach is complex and diverse. Far from confining himself to a plastic writing, he appropriates all kinds of media as long as they allow him to express himself: installation, drawing, painting, sculpture, video. Zinkpè’s painting explores tortuous paths where the characters, halfway between a human being and an animal, evoke power games, masquerades or sex, no doubt alluding to our human comedy. Its unique feature is recognizable on the canvas; intimate, powerful, provocative.

L’Agence à Paris represents artists, mainly in the field of visual arts, of all nationalities, accompanying them in all stages of creation. The Agency is developing a unique and flexible model as a possible response to the rapid changes in the creative economies. It develops reflection and action with the desire to create healthy relationships with the art market.

Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien’s installations

Born in 1990, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien has lived in Paris since leaving Côte d’Ivoire in 2004 during the civil war. In her work, she seeks to juxtapose diverse cultural elements, bringing them together to form new, syncretic pieces with additional layers of meaning. Interested in the complex relationships between notions of a universal popular culture, everyday life, and traditional handmade construction processes, Manlanbien creates physical encounters between industrial and artisanal materials. She is inspired greatly by the traditional practices of the matriarchal Akan society in Côte d’Ivoire, who historically crafted weights in order to value gold. The artist speaks of her intention to create ephemeral, poetic narrations which are in perpetual renewal, resulting in tangible pieces which both ‘witness’ and ‘trace’ past diverse cultural histories. She is represented by 50 Golborne gallery.

50 Golborne’s gallery mission is to support and promote some of the best projects and productions developed by international visual artists, designers and makers. It especially supports those relevant to portraying and interrogating a world which is changing fast and in which the African continent and its international Diaspora plays a dynamic and significant role.

Addis Fine Art with new works of Nirit Takele

Nirit Takele, born in Ethiopia in 1985, immigrated to Israel in 1991 in “Operation Solomon” an Israeli military operation that transported more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. Nirit presently works from her studio in Tel Aviv. Although she grew up with very few memories of her childhood in Ethiopia, Nirit has been painting from a very young age practising her skills by studying the works of artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Riviera and David Hockney.

She explores her cultural heritage in her works, illustrating the everyday life of the Israeli Ethiopian community and finding inspiration in old Ethiopian sagas and folk tales remembered from her youth. Nirit is a bold colourist, building up faceted figurative bodies through the application of near abstract flat forms. She is represented by Addis Fine Art.

Addis Fine Art is a pioneering gallery based in Addis Ababa and London. The very first local space and international platform based in Ethiopia, the gallery focuses on highlighting modern and contemporary fine art from the Horn of Africa region and its diasporas.

Barnard Gallery presents works by Richard Mudariki

Often drawing on classic compositions from the Old Masters of European art history, Richard Mudariki reinterprets these iconic scenes with his own cast of human and animal characters, constructing a mise-en-scene which resituates the drama within a contemporary, Southern African social context. Mudariki tackles a widerange of political and social debates with an arresting and unique visual language characterized by bright colours, irrational spaces and perspectives, theatrical compositions and allegorical use of symbolism.

Often appealing to the viewer’s sense of humour, Mudariki’s theatricality nevertheless maintains a restless, foreboding energy in its engagement with the duplicity and deception, which characterizes so much of contemporary politics. In Mudariki’s quotations of iconic moments in European art, the artist also questions notions of canonicity and accepted narratives of art history, considering his position – and the position of African artists more generally – within it.

BARNARD was founded in 2010 by owner and director Christiaan Barnard and is home to a select group of contemporary artists. The gallery has hosted a number of significant solo exhibitions by its represented artists whose works have also been included in group shows at significant museums and institutions including amongst others IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Zeitz MOCCA, Cape Town; Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Pratt Institute, New York; Foto Museum, Antwerp; BOZAR, Brussels, Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice and The Center for Book Arts, New York.

Yossi Milo Gallery presents photographs of Kyle Meyer and Pieter Hugo

Meyer’s large scale works combine equal parts photographic portraiture and craft weaving. His photographs document men from the LGBTQ community in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a nation where the local laws force queerness into hiding. Each man (or couple, in one instance) wears a headdress made from the brightly patterned wax fabric traditionally worn by women (selected by the sitter), upending our usual assumptions about clothing, gender, and beauty. Meyer then prints the images and then slices them up, meticulously interweaving the pictures with strips of the actual fabric from the headdress, creating hybrid works that merge image and object.

The success of Meyer’s works comes in the careful integration of separate conceptual frameworks, where the resulting fusion produces something more thoughtful and layered than the individual parts might have suggested on their own. Aside from the gender inversion of the headdress, the portraits are relatively straightforward, their massive scale forcing us into more intimate dialogue with the unidentified sitters. With the final portrait, Meyer presents each man’s individuality and beauty while using the fabric as a screen to protect his identity.

Established in 2000, Yossi Milo Gallery is dedicated to providing a platform for an influential community of artists working in all media, including photography, painting, sculpture, video and drawing.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Industria, 775 Washington St, New York, NY 10014, USA
May 3rd -5th 2019

http://1-54.com/

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After having developed an artistic practice focused on sculpture and assemblages at a very young age, Sadikou Oukpedjo began to paint on the fringes of his work as a sculptor and then multiplied his experiments with techniques and supports. From cement paper to pastels, from the use of chalks to painting on canvas, he creates works of new dimensions, the drawing being both modelled in the manner of wood and considered as a medium in its own right.

From 2014, upon his return from the Dakar Biennale, he began a series of works, whose hybrid figures will be exhibited in his first solo exhibition, Anima, at the Cécile Fakhoury Gallery in Abidjan in 2016. In Anima, Sadikou Oukpedjo presented a work on the human body, whose shaped forms testified to the physical and spiritual duality, half-man, half animal, of each of us. His works were intended to be a distorting, disturbing mirror to better reveal the essence of human life, that of a fragmented identity to be reinvented.

Sadikou Oukpedjo stands against silence through painting

When we look at Oukpedjo’s works, simple questions come to mind. However, these questions will prove to be more profound and even existential. Why all these animals? Why these hybrid characters, half human, half animal? Why nudity? How to understand it? Does the artist wish to expose human nature and reveal our most intimate contradictions? Why this strong hybridization between animals and humans in his compositions?

The paintings are raw, without detours, without aesthetic research at any cost. Complex and metaphorical. Large canvases in deep colours, speckled with picturesque, evanescent and even mythological characters. Oukpedjo’s compositions give a rupestrian, and even primitive, dimension to his works. A double presence of shapes and materials gives depth and light. In contrast to the darkness of the subjects treated. One, apparent, poultry (or a bird one cannot distinguish) in a cage as a head, on a human body, other hybrid characters remind us of centaurs from Greek mythologies except that here, these bodies are not half man, half horse but rather half human, half cattle animal or domesticated for their food consumption by humans (hens, guinea fowls, goats among others).

“The works created by Sadikou for the exhibition are really strong, and this Silentium series marks a milestone in the presentation of his work,” explains Francis Coraboeuf, curator at the Cécile Fakhoury gallery.

“The works are getting bigger and bigger without losing their intensity, his technique is still as powerful and delicate as ever. He conquers new territories: Sadikou is an intense creator, he devours the world, he uses every opportunity to assimilate techniques and knowledge, he is an artist in constant evolution, each exhibition, each work is the opportunity to appropriate a new territory, a technique not previously realized”.

Large canvases with deep colors that raise existential questions

Indeed, Oukpedjo’s paintings invite to philosophical reflections on the real human nature and the question of animality, like the two sides of the same coin. Embedded as if both – were – not without the other, each human possesses his animal in itself and both seem to fight to exist. What if each animal had a part of humanity in itself? If what defines mankind is consciousness and speech, then does the silence that results from the loss of previous attributes make the human being an animal? The artist invites us to hear the sound of silence, which he depicts as the new noise. He denounces an absence of sound, the contagion of an inner silence, silencing what should be said to others, but first to oneself. Which, by its violence, by its power, should be enough to break the wall of silence, the silence of our conscience. When the conscience is silent, man falls off his pedestal and loses the legitimacy of his superiority.

Some paintings feature accessories such as a gun held by a human body at the head of a guinea fowl, pointing at a man who seems to be begging for mercy. While on another painting, a new type of centaur – because the horse here is replaced by what appears to be an ox – offers a flower to a man who despises the look. The animals are presented in a naive innocence. Ready for sacrifice. The hybridization that seems sacrificial where it is not known which of the human or animal is sacrificed by the other in this incessant struggle.

The human condition: a universal discourse delivered by the artist

“In terms of discourse too, his message is increasingly strong and universal and when he speaks in this way of the human condition, of the suffering that man can inflict on man, I believe that many are touched in themselves.” says Francis.

Would the artist refer to the man who, devoured by his own animality and loss of consciousness, finds himself as described in the Leviathan of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who according to him, his life is lonely, destitute, disgusting, animal and brief?  In this way, man could not be distinguished from an animal. Homo Homini lupus est – Man is a wolf for man. Or is it the past of slavery and colonialism, a period during which man was treated like a – wild animal – to be domesticated at all costs or to be sacrificed?

Francis continues, “The series of works was produced in Abidjan for the exhibition. Before creating these works, he spent several months in residence at the Cité des Arts in Paris, then made a detour to Lomé where he created a monumental sculpture installation for the Palais de Lomé, which will soon open its doors. On the gallery side this is Sadikou’s second solo exhibition in Abidjan and we will soon publish his first (modest) catalogue to mark the event.”

A discussion on animals consumption?

Sadikou Oukpedjo’s work, (we do not know if this was the artist’s intention), could raise an increasingly controversial issue in our contemporary societies, namely the consumption of animals. Do animals feel emotions? Do they feel fear, danger, compassion? Does that make them more human ? If mankind becomes an animal by losing consciousness and speech, does that mean that animals would have a part of humanity if they felt emotions? The appearance in the canvases almost exclusively of animals consumed by man ready to be sacrificed, while the man appears as the executioner leads us to ask ourselves which of the man or animal is really the monster. A responsibility that echoes the silence of Sadikou Oukpedjo’s characters.

Silentium 
Second solo show of Sadikou Oukpedjo 
At the Cécile Fakhoury gallery
Exhibition to explore until 11th Mai 2019
Abidjan, Ivory Coast
www.cecilefakhoury.com

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An increasingly large contingent within Investec Cape Town Art Fair is made up of prominent galleries from around the globe. These galleries represent exciting, established and emerging artists with a presence in museums, biennials, and important private collections around the world. International galleries returning to the Fair are:

• Perrotin (Paris)
• Galleria Minini (Brescia)
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan)
• Galleria Continua (San Gimignano)
• Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi)
• Officine dell’Immagine (Milan)
• Gregor Podnar (Berlin)
• First Floor Gallery (Harare)
• Tyburn Gallery (London)
• October Gallery (London)
• Galleria Giovanni Bonelli (Milan)
• Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa)
• Afriart Gallery (Kampala)
• ARTCO Gallery (Aachen)
• Caroline Smulders (Paris)
• THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE (Luanda)
• Sulger-Buel Lovell (London)
• Galerie Pascal Janssens (Ghent)
• Art First (London), MOVART (Luanda)
• THIS IS NO FANTASY (Melbourne).

There is also an influx of international galleries participating in Investec Cape Town Art Fair for the first time:

• Templon (Paris)
• MAGNIN-A (Paris)
• LOOM Gallery (Milan)
• Ayyam Gallery (Dubai)
• Retro Africa (Lagos)
• Lia Rumma (Milan)
• LKB/Gallery (Hamburg)
• Omenka Gallery (Lagos)
• Montoro12 Gallery (Rome)
• Eduardo Secci Contemporary (Florence)
• Art Twenty One (Lagos)
• Apalazzo Gallery (Brescia)
• Barbara Paci Galleria d’Arte (Pietrasanta)
• Nil Gallery (Paris)
• Cellar Contemporary (Trento)
• ELA – Espaço Luanda Arte (Luanda)
• NOMAD Gallery (Brussels)
• Sitor Senghor (Paris)
• Louis Simone Guirandou Gallery (Abidjan)
• Matter Gallery (Toronto).

Investec Cape Town Art Fair serves as the hometown fair of local galleries with a significant international presence. ICTAF 2019 will see new presentations by leading South African galleries including Goodman Gallery, Everard Read CIRCA, Stevenson, SMAC Gallery, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Gallery MOMO, SMITH, and Blank Projects. Alongside their presentations at ICTAF these galleries, each of whom are pillars of the art scene in Cape Town and South Africa at-large, will form a captivating programme of exhibition openings and events to coincide with the Fair.

Tomorrows/Today, the section of the Fair which aims to place a spotlight on emerging and under-represented artists, will be curated by Fair Curator Tumelo Mosaka. The artists presented in Tomorrows/Today are positioned to be tomorrow’s leading names in contemporary art. The presentations in the section have continued to be thought-provoking and experimental since its inception at the 2016 edition of the Fair. Tomorrows/Today reiterates the Fair’s support of artists who may otherwise be overlooked by the art market.

The second iteration of the SOLO section, will explore the effects of the digital world on artistic production and our lived realities. Each edition of SOLO aims to present a more in-depth insight into the artistic practices of a varied selection of artists than is commonly found in the commercially-driven art fair setting. The selected artists have varying aesthetics and contexts, are situated in different stages of their careers, and have unique perspectives on each edition’s thematic focus.

Artskop3437 is an official partner of Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF)

See the full exhibitor list here

© Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) 2019

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From the late 1980s onwards, his abstract pictorial practice in large formats, first spotted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, was exhibited in Europe at the Documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale, and overseas at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, MoMA PS1, the New Museum in New York, as well as at the Whitney Biennial. 

With strong colours, dynamic forms and hypnotic ideograms, Ouattara Watts’ multi-media painting explores fantasized human and spiritual connections, and transcends geographies and nationalities in order to move towards the universal. 

“My vision is not related to a country or a continent; it transcends borders and everything that can be seen on a map. While I use identifiable elements to be better understood, this is a project that goes far beyond that. It’s the cosmos I paint.” 

Ouattara Watts

By merging images and found objects, photographic photographs or raw materials, Ouattara Watts sublimates the concept of multiculturalism and gives us different levels of understanding of the world, socially and historically. Imbued with lyricism and wit, his art combines dream worlds and magical visions linked to our ancestors in order to show the metaphysical relationships that exist between beings. 

Cécile Fakhoury Gallery represents the artist in Africa.

Solo and group exhibitions and collections (selection): 

• “Africa, artists of yesterday and today” Fondation Clément, Le François (Martinique), 2018
• “The Juices of Times” (with Jems Robert Koko Bi) Pavilion of Côte d’Ivoire, 57th Biennale of Venice (Italy), 2017
• “Ouattara Watts: The Project Room “ FIAF (French Institute Alliance Française), New York (United States), 2012 

Ouattara Watts, “Before Looking at this Work, Listen to It”

From 23 November 2018 to 26 January 2019, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury in Abidjan is presenting the first monographic exhibition of Ouattara Watts in Côte d’Ivoire. On this occasion, the gallery is publishing a catalogue of his work. A retrospective of the artist also takes place at La Rotonde des Arts Contemporains in Abidjan

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

www.cecilefakhoury.com
Abidjan – Dakar – Paris

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