This is Gagosian – NY's second (September 5 to October 13) exhibition of Hazoumè's work after a 2016 show in Paris, and his first solo show in New York since 1999. Hazoumè's art – spanning between sculpture, photography, film and sound – absorbs and engages with the complex realities of contemporary life in Benin and the wider ramifications of pan-African politics. A bricoleur whose formal currency is often found in recycled materials – for example, the fifty liter plastic drum, or canister, a local staple for the illegal purchase of cheap petrol from Nigeria – Hazoumè uses strategies of repetition and recombination to create elegant power works whose effects are intensified by the play on words of its titles. Masks are perhaps the best known aspect of Hazoumè's art.
In Yoruba culture, masks have long held ceremonial and symbolic importance, as the head and face are often considered to be the locus of a person's destiny.
Freed from ritual or sociological purposes, Hazoumè's masks consciously adapt the signifiers of the African-European exchange with contemporary realities. Composed of plastic petrol containers and other waste materials, the masks are loaded with subtext, recalling the Beninese men and women who, unable to find legal employment, are forced to transport smuggled petrol between Nigerian sources and their consumers Benin to survive.
Each mask achieves a vivid quality of illusion as Hazoumè imbues inanimate objects with qualities that allude to a life story or story. Toupieman (2018), made of an orange plastic bottle and what could be a household cleaning brush, bears three carved openings, like two eyes and a mouth, which could mean laughter, words or a cry. Algoma (2016) takes its name from the Burmese who provided the artist with the horsehair broom that tops this mask, which pays homage to Rohingya refugees driven out of Myanmar. The sculpture Alagbada (2018) takes its name from the Yoruba word meaning "the one who wears the dress" or "the garment carrier". The spirit of Alagbada is a guide or explorer who points the way with the rapid movement of his dress; showing only the robe of Alagbada, Hazoumè evokes a presence, or a being, in the same way as the masks of him.
Hazoumè's work, with its layered symbols, draws attention to the lingering consequences of corruption and subjugation across Africa. Immediate and arresting, his works embody the world order as an interdependent ecosystem, underlining its interconnectedness and asymmetry with wit and irreverence. Without providing prescriptive interpretations of the stories he weaves, Hazoumè's works challenge the viewer to engage with assemblages on their own terms, resisting didacticism, while their dazzling precision speaks for itself.
Romuald Hazoume was born in 1962 in Porto-Novo, Benin and lives and works in Cotonou, Benin. His work is included in public collections including the British Museum, London; Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva; Fondation Zinsou, Cotonou, Benin; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, Australia; Neue Galerie, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Germany; and Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany. His solo exhibitions include La Bouche du Roi, Menil Collection, Houston (2005, trip to the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2006, and the British Museum, London, 2007); ARTicle 14, Romuald Hazoumè, World Museum, Liverpool, England (2006); Romuald Hazoumè: My Paradise-Made in Porto-Novo, Gerisch-Stiftung, Neumünster, Germany (2010); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2011); Romuald Hazoumè: solidarity with endangered Westerners, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2013-14); and Romuald Hazoumè: Dance of the Butterflies, Manchester Museum, England (2015).
Hazoumè has participated in the Lyon Biennial, France, the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (both 2000), and the 3rd Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2009). You were awarded the Arnold Bode Prize for your participation in documenta 12 (2007).
ROMUALD HAZOUMÉ
