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GALERIE CÉCILE FAKHOURY ABIDJAN, EXHIBITS THE PAINTER ROMÉO MIVEKANNIN >> 28 NOV. 2020
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Beninese artist, Roméo Mivekannin at its gallery in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 18 September, 2020 to 28 November, 2020. The exhibition presents a dozen large format works that have never before been shown to the public.
Born in Bouaké (Côte d’Ivoire) in 1986, Roméo Mivekannin lives and works between Toulouse (France) and Cotonou (Benin).
From Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “The Slave Market” (1873) to Gustave Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and the first photographic portraits of the colonial monarchies of the second half of the 19th century, Roméo Mivekannin focuses particularly on the ambiguous representations of black figures, sources of both fascination and fear, sometimes anonymized, eroticized or objectified and intended for the almost exclusive gaze of a male and Euro-centred viewer.
The artist’s works; black acrylic paintings on canvases tinted by repeated elixir baths, question a marked iconography inherited from the systems of human trafficking and domination that stemmed from slavery and colonization.
For his first solo exhibition in Africa, Roméo Mivekannin deploys a process of eloquent sculptural conversation. From one work to the next, the compositions of the canvases are in constant dialogue with a complex visual history made of direct references to classical painting and to the stereotyped images that defined the representation of black people in 19th century Europe.
Faced with the inability to identify himself with these images and to weave a thread through these historical narratives, Roméo Mivekannin fits into these representative regimes, substituting his own portrait for those of the original black characters. The repeated appearance of the artist’s face sometimes in the foreground, sometimes hidden in the crowds of figurants is disturbing.
Like an uncompromising assertion, the repetition embodies his desire to reclaim a regime of visibility from which he had hitherto been excluded. In Mivekannin’s work, the act of representation is thus an intimate ritual of accession to identity. Each work has its own historical time. The canvases are plunged several times into elixir baths, the composition of which only the artist knows, giving them each their unique coloring. Then comes the moment of painting. "In the voodoo tradition," explains the artist, "each god corresponds to a deceased ancestor. When one wears the mask of one of these gods, of a person who has lived, it is an act of liberation".
In his works, Roméo Mivekannin thus questions the invisible and the hidden. He brings to light the workings of representation that carry the systems of domination and introduces a subtle critique, on the borderline between rewriting a collective memory and repairing a fractured personal identity.
ROMÉO MIVEKANNIN
Solo show
18 September - 28 November 2020
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury - Abidjan
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury opened its doors in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in September 2012. In May 2018 the gallery inaugurated a second space in Dakar, Senegal and a showroom in Paris. The gallery aims to promote contemporary art in Africa.
It offers visibility to creativity and contemporary artistic diversity in Africa through its programming of solo shows and group exhibitions, participation in international art fairs and biennales, and through its collaboration with galleries abroad.
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury
