Romuald Hazoumé
Romuald Hazoumé (born February 7, 1962 in Porto-Novo , Benin ; actually Romuald Hâtozoumê . The previous spelling is Hazoumé. In March 2010, he himself ordered that his name should now be written Hazoumè) is a Benin artist who primarily works for his symbolic masks from water cans is known. His works often have myths and traditions of his homeland as motifs, whether they are masks, installations or large-scale paintings.
life and work
Romuald Hazoumè attended a French high school and was enthusiastic about sports in his youth. He became a judo master in his country and also painted pictures that were influenced by all kinds of rites and symbols of local followers of certain traditional religions .
At his first public exhibition in 1989 at the Center Culturel Français in Cotonou , he was discovered by the renowned curator for African art André Magnin . He saw Hazoumé's work made from scrap metal, wooden rubble, scraps of tin and discarded plastic canisters, which he had made into masks and thus "animated" the garbage. Exhibitions in various cities such as Houston , Paris , London and in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao followed .
Hazoumé was represented with several works at documenta 12 in Kassel . The most spectacular was “Dream” (2007), an installation (approx. 200 m²) consisting of a refugee boat assembled from cut plastic canisters, a photograph (approx. 30 m²) of an African river village and several floor markings in four languages (German, English, French, an African one Language). The English slogan was roughly translated as "Damn if you leave and damn if you stay, better, at least, to have gone and to fail in the boat of your dreams." Like many others, this work was a political statement on the current development of Africa Bought by the documenta and the city of Kassel for the Neue Galerie . At documenta 12 he received the Arnold Bode Prize 2007, endowed with 10,000 euros .
Quotes
"My art can only arise here (..) Africa, that is the source of my inspiration."
"It's hard to talk about an African identity. The complexity of Africa is indescribable. I think it shows the arrogance of the West when people try to make us believe that we have no art or that the art of Yoruba folklore is the
best The way to serve the people of Africa is to express their suffering with the most popular object in Benin today. But that is not the car, it is the gasoline cans on the streets. And these cans are already masks. The result is one A mask that cannot be an African mask or an image of an African mask. It has nothing to do with any aestheticism. "
- - Romuald Hazoumé: My Paradise - Made in Porto-Novo
plant
Dream, 2007
literature
- Martin Henatsch (ed.), Romuald Hazoumè. My Paradise - Made in Porto-Novo , Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7757-2645-0
- Daniela Roth, Romuald Hazoumè. Mister Kanister and the oral postmodernism, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5428-7
Web links
- Materials by and about Romuald Hazoumé in the documenta archive
- http://www.danykellergalerie.de/kuenstler/hazoume/hazoume.text.html
- http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/coursesworkshops/7681.htm (English)
- http://www.art-magazin.de/kunst/279/romuald_hazoumé_documenta_12
- http://arttattler.com/archiveatlantictrade.html (engl.)
swell
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hazoumé, Romuald |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Benin artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 7, 1962 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Porto-Novo , Benin |