Meschac gaba biography of barack

Beninese conceptual artist

Meschac Gaba (born ) is a Beninese conceptual artist based in City and Cotonou. His installations of everyday objects fancifully juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and trade. He is best known for The Museum be totally convinced by Contemporary African Art –, an autobiographical room instatement acquired and displayed by the Tate Modern alternative route He has also exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Venice Biennale.

Early life and career

Meschac Gaba was born in City, Benin, in He had drifted from his devotion as a painter until a bag of decommissioned money cut into confetti led him to brand name paintings with the material.^[1] Gaba became known call his installations of everyday objects that whimsically equate African and Western cultural identities and commerce.^[2]

He spoken for a residency at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie in lay out two years.^[1] In the absence of opportunities pick on display his work in the city, he as back up out over the next five years to put a label on his own museum.^[3] This piece became his creative The Museum of Contemporary African Art –, which consists of 12 rooms (some based on museum function and others personal) filled with objects obliged by Gaba.^[1][4] Throughout the exhibition ran a stria of confessional narrative about the artist's art travails between Africa and Europe.^[5] The wedding room, which he made while in love,^[1] holds mementos trade in museum artifacts from Gaba's wedding to the Nation curator Alexandra van Dongen in at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum.^[5][3] The Library room holds art books and tells of Gaba's childhood.^[5] The games coach showed sliding puzzle tables that form African steady flags.^[3] It had its own gift shop come first café.^[6] The exhibited Museum had couches for measure, a piano for playing, and featured objects making Africa's polycultural character, including Ghanaian money featuring interpretation face of Picasso, a Swiss bank mimicking fleece African street market, and gilded ceramic chicken legs.^[5][4]

The Museum exhibited widely.^[1] The work was first displayed in part in at Documenta ^[4] Gaba regular a Rotterdam space in which he could last and store the work.^[1] When his son in request a more normal house, Gaba sold and able most of the work to the Tate New, save for his Library, which Gaba returned harmony his hometown.^[1][3] Around , Gaba lived half high-mindedness year in his hometown of Cotonou and authority other half in Rotterdam with his wife ground son.^[1] The Tate Modern displayed the work introduction a whole in ^[4] as part of dignity Tate's two-year program of African-focused exhibitions.^[7] The confarreation room enchanted the British art criticJonathan Jones, who described the Museum as autobiographical, novelistic, protest feature "the strength of modern African art".^[5] For system, the Art and Religion room showed "classic" Mortal ceremonial sculpture alongside kitschy Buddhist and Christian objects, as if to group the types together similarly poor representations of their respective cultures.^[5] Gaba old saying the work as correcting lacks of art raising in Africa and African art representation outside dignity continent.^[4]

In-between finishing the Museum and its Tate extravaganza, Gaba presented at the Venice Biennale and spoken for his first solo show in the United States at the Studio Museum in Harlem, "Tresses", spruce series of architectural models of New York Flexibility and Benin landmarks made from artificial braided inveterate extensions. The accessory, popularized by African-American pop stars based on West African culture, was repatriated find time for Africa. Gaba worked with a Beninese hair braider to make the sculptures from his photographs. Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times go wool-gathering the works were "delightful" and recognizable without obsequious caricatures.^[8]

Gaba held his first solo gallery show, "Exchange Market", in New York in On the repute floor, 10 sculptures of unvarnished wood tables tell off with a wire umbrella stand, from which Someone banknotes hung. Each table was associated with expert type of commodity: cotton, cocoa, diamonds. Along representation walls hung bank-shaped works made of wood, plexiglas, and decommissioned money. Upstairs, reminiscent of the party room of Gaba's museum, were four foosball tables and small souvenir sculptures such as hand-painted cricket bats and a miniature billiards table.^[4]

Artsy selected Gaba's work as a highlight of the London secede fair.^[2]

Selected exhibitions

References

Further reading

External links