Meschac Gaba

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Ekué Woekedje Meschac Gaba (* 1961 in Cotonou ) is an artist from Benin . In his installations, Gaba mostly deals with socio-political issues such as the effects of colonialism in Africa , but also makes references to the role of contemporary art and its institutions themselves. His work has been shown at international exhibitions such as Documenta11 and the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.

Life

Meschac Gaba first trained as an autodidact and later as a student in the workshop of the painter Zossou Gratien. After his first exhibitions in Benin, he was invited by a foundation to stay in France in 1990, which was followed by trips to Senegal and the Ivory Coast. In 1996 he was finally accepted at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam , and the first of his works was sold to the Stichting Beeldende Kunst and other collections. From the late 1990s on, Gaba took part in numerous exhibitions around the world, including 1999–2001 the touring exhibition Mirror's Edge by curator Okwui Enwezor , who also showed Gaba's work at Documenta11, and 2004–2007 at Africa Remix . In 2003 Gaba was one of five artists to represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale; his works have also been shown at several other biennials, including the 2006 9th Havana Biennale in Cuba , the 27th São Paulo Biennale in Brazil and the Sydney Biennale in Australia .

In 2000 Gaba married the Dutch curator Alexandra van Dongen; the marriage took place within the exhibition For Real in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and was documented as a “Wedding Room” and an artistic performance . Gaba lives and works in Rotterdam .

plant

Meschac Gaba's works are mainly related to the effects of colonialism and globalization. In doing so, he works on more complex relationships between economy, culture and society, as well as specific phenomena that relate directly to the reality of life of the individual; In his work Boulangerie Africaine (2004), for example, he addressed the baguette introduced by the French colonial rulers to his home country Benin , which has now become part of the local food culture, although its local production lacks its actual basis due to the lack of wheat cultivation .

A central motif in Gaba's work is the banknote . This is either used as a motif itself and is often manipulated in the process, or incorporated directly into installations and objects as material. The manipulated banknotes relate to questions of the market and (colonial) representation: in “Money Tree”, an object in the Museum of Contemporary African Art series , Gaba mounted portraits of artists like Pablo Picasso , who - in the sense of primitivism - related to “African” art, in banknotes from African countries, while another work in the same row brings together actual banknotes from different countries, on which artists are depicted as representatives of national culture.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

literature

Meschac Gaba, Bert Steevensz, Gijs Stork (Eds.): Library of the Museum of Contemporary African Art , Amsterdam 2001. ISBN 9075380208

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fenneken Veldkamp: "Artepreneurs - how African artists are conquering the market", in: Zam Africa Magazine . July 21, 2009 (Retrieved September 18, 2009)
  2. ↑ Anna Tilroe "Meschac Gaba, and the inflation of reality", in: Gaba 2001, pp 41-47
  3. ↑ Ben Borthwick, Meschac Gaba , text on the exhibition at Tate Modern 2005. Retrieved January 18, 2016
  4. ↑ Sebastián López: “The Museum Space”, in: Gaba 2001, pp. 65–71
  5. ↑ Notice on the exhibition , accessed on January 23, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Gaba, Meschac
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gaba, Ekué Woekedje Meschac (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Benin artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Cotonou