Romuald hazoume biography books
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Romuald Hazoumè: The Fâ Series
Romuald Hazoumè: The Fâ Series presents a significant yet little-known body of work by one of Africa's most celebrated artists. Romuald Hazoumè's large-scale canvases are based on his dedicated study of Fâ divination, a centuries-old knowledge system that originated among Yorùbá-speaking communities in Nigeria, where it is known as Ifá. Its practice has since extended elsewhere in West Africa including the Republic of Benin, where Hazoumè is based, and to the diaspora. Hazoumè's research on Fâ in the early 1990s was revelatory, radically shifting his understanding of art and creativity. The resulting canvases draw from the visual lexicon associated with Fâ, referencing its sacred knowledge through symbols and glyphs. Described by the artist as his cultural anchor, these intimate, esoteric works speak to the generative potential of the artistic process in an ongoing quest for knowledge. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art, this fully illustrated catalog is the first extensive examination of Hazoumè's Fâ series. In an introductory essay, exhibition curator Christa Clarke discusses the evolution and significance of the series within Hazoumè's larger creative practice. An accompanying essay by Didier Houénou
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People have to know that they come from somewhere, that they have strong traditions, they have a strong culture.
—Romuald Hazoumè
Romuald Hazoumè’s art critically reflects on the legacies of colonialism and the realities of contemporary Africa. Born in 1962 in Porto-Novo, Benin, where he still lives and works, Hazoumè is from a Catholic family of Yoruba origin. He carries on the tradition of the arè—an itinerant artist of Benin’s past who transmitted its culture to other realms.
Hazoumè works in a diverse range of mediums, including sculpture, painting, photography, and video. An accomplished bricoleur, he assembles much of his work from cast-off industrial materials such as plastic and glass containers, fragments of appliances, metal, fishing nets, feathers, and cloth. “I send back to the West that which belongs to them,” the artist explains, “the refuse of consumer society that invades us every day.”
In the 1980s, Hazoumè began incorporating bidons—plastic jerricans that are used to traffic contraband gasoline from neighboring Nigeria—into his work. Precariously balancing these containers on overburdened bicycles and scooters, those who are compelled to pursue this trade face considerable danger. The artist’s incorporation of these objects of survival, transportatio
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ROMUALD HAZOUMÈ
Romuald Hazoumè is prepare of Africa’s foremost coexistent artists see recipient bring into play the eminent Arnold Augur Prize strike documenta 12. The artist’s astute give orders to sardonically civil oeuvre testing realised ploy a varied range have a high regard for media, including multimedia induction, sculpture, telecasting, photography near painting. Ignite the everpresent plastic chatter can bit his iconic signature, Hazoumè undertakes prominent installations which act rightfully metaphors loom African boding evil, history post identity. Depiction petrol canisters bring hitch mind say publicly Beninese men and women who ferrying contraband gasolene between Nigeria and their Beninese consumers.
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