Le menu familial. Instinctively Tayou knows how much to exhibit to enable the visitors' immersion into the portrayed African village life, without confusing or overwhelming them.
The artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, born in Kamerun
in 1967 and now living in Brussels, originally wanted
to become a lawyer for the poor. As an
internationally active mediator between cultures,
Tayou has in actual fact become an even more
influential lawyer of worldwide communication.
In Berne Tayou has staged a virtual visit to the
village of his childhood. High walls made from plaster
subdivide the exhibition rooms into a kind of
labyrinth and appear as an abstraction of the lower,
red-brown brick walls captured on countless
photographs hanging on the plaster walls. These
large and colourful snapshots tell of the joyous life
documented by Tayou on his last visit to the village.
Sounds and a babble of voices are to be heard
coming from different spontaneously shot videos
screened behind these walls.
Instinctively Tayou knows how much to exhibit to
enable the visitors' immersion into the portrayed
African village life, without confusing or
overwhelming them. At the same time, one is made
aware of the rituals accompanying the Western way
of life: The 16 postcard stands set up in the
entrance filled with colourful snapshots recall
souvenir shops found all over the world.
Parallel to Tayou's show, the visiting curator
Evelyne Jouanno has invited the Cambalache
Collective for her eighth and last exhibition in the
project room of the Kunsthalle Bern. This collective
of artists, formed in 1998 in the Columbian Bogota,
has developed the idea of a 'street museum'
intended for the exchange of useable and useful
objects.
(transl. Carlotta Graedel Matthäi)
Kunsthalle Bern
Helvetiaplatz 1 3005 Berne
Open: Wednesday/Sunday 10 am - 5 pm; Tuesday 10 am - 7 pm