C’est l’un des artistes africains les plus radicaux de sa génération. En ethnographe et archiviste, le Béninois Georges Adéagbo, né en 1942, laboure depuis les années 1990 le thème de la mondialisation par le biais d’assemblages voués, selon ses mots, à « construire à partir de la langue imposée un libre langage ». Dans la section Feature, la galerie Wien Lukatsch présente une installation baptisée “Les artistes et l‘écriture”..!, composée de sculptures africaines, de peintures, de notes et commentaires, d’objets trouvés et de livres, les siens et ceux glanés dans les villes où il est invité à exposer. Comme un dialogue souterrain entre sa culture africaine et celles qu’il croise sur sa route. À coup de glissements et courts-circuits, il pointe les constantes de l’Histoire : le racisme, la pauvreté, la crise, les guerres. Dans cette œuvre, il explore précisément un conflit, celui du Biafra qui s’est déroulé au sud-est du Nigeria entre 1967 et 1970. Un autre ensemble fait un parallèle entre le massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy et la Shoah.
Same same, but different.
He is one of the most radical African artists of his generation. Since the 1990s, Georges Adéagbo, who was born in Benin in 1942, takes on the role of an ethnographer and archivist to work on the theme of globalization using assemblies that are intended, in his own words, to “build a free language out of the language which is imposed on us.” In the Feature section, Galerie Wien Lukatsch is presenting an installation by Georges Adéagbo entitled “Les artistes et l’écriture”..!. It comprises African sculptures, paintings, notes and observations, found objects and books (both the artist’s and those picked up in the various towns where he is invited to exhibit) and seems to be taking part in a subterranean dialogue between his African culture and those cultures he meets on his travels. In his works, using chains of association and cultural translation, he pinpoints the constants in history: racism, poverty, crises and wars. And indeed this piece is also exploring a conflict, the Biafran War to be precise, which took place in the southeast of Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. Another piece establishes a parallel between the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the Shoah. Same same, but different.
Georges Adéagbo
1942 Born in Cotonou, Benin
2002 Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany
2004 “Georges Adéagbo: Le Socialisme Africain”, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
2012 Triennial “Intense Proximity”,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
