Contemporary art in resonance with traditional metallurgy

The aim of this exhibition is not to reflect the full range of iron objects and sculptures from Africa, as it is the case for the exhibition “Frapper le fer” of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. It’s about to compare the simple yet sophisticated shapes of objects from traditional African iron metallurgy (coins, medicine sticks, weapons, shields, etc.) with modern and contemporary African sculptures in the same metal.

The relationship between the ancien and the modern is complemented by the recent iron sculptures by two young Beninese artists invited for a creative residency at the Blachère Foundation earlier in the year, Marius Dansou and Rémy Samuz. Drawings by Soly Cissé, photographs by J. D. Okhai Ojeikere, prints on Dibon by Mansour Ciss, but also Confluences of El Anatsui, flamboyant wall sculpture made of strips of aluminium and copper wire that refers to Ghanaian Kente textiles, and Dexu Adüna dʼAlexis Peskine, a deep portrait of a young man literally nailed to black wooden boards, constitute a discreet resonance to the iron sculptures, old and contemporary, of the exhibition

This exhibition in Apt includes the art centre of the Blachère Foundation, the painted exterior walls of the building, the garden treated as a sculpture park and the Gabriel Péri square in Apt with the Universal Prayer of Ndary Lo, already presented on the Parvis of the Popes’ Palace in Avignon in 2017.

Remy SAMUZ one of the exhibited artists was born in 1982 in Cotonou, Benin, where he lives and works. Since childhood, he has been creating miniature sculptures of all kinds of characters. This passion, misunderstood then, earned him to be considered as a strange child. He decided to devote himself to art only in 2003, while he was following a training in general mechanics, and develops a technique in braided wire, giving a lot of rigidity to his sculptures while maintaining a great lightness.

Trans-fer

Fondation blachère

Exhibition of contemporary art from Africa

From 5th December to 26th September 2020

zi les Bourguignons, 382 Avenue des Argiles, 84400 Apt

France

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Organized by the Foundation for the Development of Contemporary African Culture (FDCCA) and curated by Yacouba Konaté and Brahim Alaoui, the exhibition “Prête-moi Ton Rêve” brings together some fifty works by 28 renowned African artists including Jane Alexander, Soly Cissé, Abdoulaye Konaté, Jems Koko Bi, William Kentridge, Chéri Samba, Barthélémy Toguo, Nnenna Okoré, Ouattara Watts.

This collective and continental exhibition, placed under the sign of South-South collaboration, was inaugurated in Casablanca on 18 June 2019 and will travel to a total of 6 African countries.

For its Abidjan stopover, “Prête-moi ton Rêve” is a partner of the 11th edition of MASA, Abidjan Performing Arts Market (7 to 14 March 2020), a major Ivorian cultural event that aims to support African artistic creation.

In parallel to the main exhibition, the Abidjan Contemporary Arts Rotunda will host a tribute exhibition curated by Henri Nkoumo. The carte blanche exhibition will be entrusted to the Ivorian art critic and curator Mimi Errol at the Houkami Guyzagn gallery.

The exhibition “Prête-moi ton rêve” will be open to the public from 12 March and will run until 19 April 2020 before starting its next stopovers across the African continent.

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“Far from the reaches of frivolity–a domain to which fashion is usually relegated–Black people have continually engaged the fashion object beyond its utilitarian functions into a device of pride, protection, resistance and camouflage,”— states curator Dario Calmese.

Featuring work by 14 artists,  the new exhibition “Fashioning the Black Body” surveys how fashion, style, and the garment act as devices of investigative storytelling.

As a form of identification, self-actualization, and agency, the select artists engage the fashion object from various points of its ontogeny. In turn, Fashioning the Black Body becomes a dialogue about space: the space between black skin and cloth, the space that exists between the historically commodified and fetishized black body, and the space claimed for one’s self-defined identity.

Featured artists include: Bisa Butler, Soly Cissé, Renee Cox, David Antonio Cruz, Kenturah Davis, Hassan Hajjaj, Basil Kincaid, Mario Moore, Chris Ofili, Fahamu Pecou, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Jacolby Satterwhite, Stan Squirewell, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.

Through the work of these artists, the Black body is transubstantiated into a semipermeable membrane between the gaze and the contents it holds–and more concretely–the tenuous distances between who we are, who we want to be, and how we are perceived.

The curator of the event Dario Calmese is an artist working in photography whose practice includes live performance, video, and text. He received his master’s in photography from School of Visual Arts and his bachelor’s in psychology at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. Classically trained in the performing arts, he uses his knowledge of movement, gesture, and psychology to create characters and narratives that explore history, race, class, and what it means to be human.

“Fashioning the Black Body” opens this Friday, March 15 and will remain on view through May 4. A talk with curator Dario Calmese and artists Kenturah Davis, Basil Kincaid and Katherine Simóne Reynolds — moderated by Rikki Byrd — will take place at the gallery this Saturday, March 16 at 11 a.m.

*Images courtesy of projects+gallery.

→ For more information, visit projects+gallery’s website.

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