Georges Adeagbo
dal 29/6/2007 al 24/8/2007
Segnalato da
29/6/2007
Georges Adeagbo
Daad Galerie, Berlin
Tout de moi a' tous. The artist continuously mediates between the different perspectives of his native culture and exhibition locations. His site-specific compositions deal with personal episodes as well as with complex global issues, reaching as far back as European colonialism and exploitation, which in its most extreme form was slavery.
Tout de moi a' tous
Georges Adéagbo’s installations can remind us of times we take strange
pebbles or twigs found on a walk home as a treasure. He gives value to
traces humans leave behind unconsciously, considered by most to be trivial,
and displays them like an open book. Adéagbo continuously mediates between
the different perspectives of his native culture and exhibition locations.
His site-specific compositions deal with personal episodes as well as with
complex global issues, reaching as far back as European colonialism and
exploitation, which in its most extreme form was slavery.
Since September 2006, Adéagbo has been exploring Berlin as guest of the DAAD
Artists-in-Residence program. At the daadgalerie he shows the fruits of his
research in an exhibition entitled “Tout de moi à tous” and invites the
public to create links between different realities. The work gathers
together objects found on Berlin flea markets and in thrift shops, urban
organs that the artist views as being analogue to our livers and kidneys.
His choice displays his sharp sense as an ethnologist of Europe – a reversal
of roles!
Invited by the Ulmer Museum, Adéagbo is showing an installation in response
to Christoph Weickmann’s seventeenth century collection of miracles
(Wunderkammer), which includes many objects from western Africa
(2.3.-13.5.2007). It is an artist’s reflection on how Europeans grasped and
assimilated the flood of incoming information brought home by explorers, by
creating wonder chambers. Returning to this subject, “Tout de moi à tous”
gives Berlin a mirror of overlooked perspectives and miracles. It invites
viewers to continue their explorations far beyond the categories ‘local’ and
‘foreign’.
Georges Adéagbo was born in 1942 in Cotonou, Benin, and is considered the
most outstanding West African artist since his participation at documenta
11. He showed an installation on explorers and the history of exploration
with roughly 1500 objects, juxtaposing clichés of Africa and pieces found at
the place of showing. The Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art is currently
showing one of Adéagbo’s works, which it acquired in November 2006.
Opening june 30, 2007
daadgalerie
Zimmerstr. 90-91- Berlin
Free admission