Meschac Gaba: Tresses and other recent projects

MESCHAC GABA tresses

+ other recent projects

MESCHAC GABA tresses + other recent projects

MESCHAC GABA tresses + other recent projects

MICHAEL STEVENSON

JOHANNESBURG ART GALLERY

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contents

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forewords joost bosland clive kellner

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europe: that other african country khwezi gule

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recent projects

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translating the world into softness meschac gaba in conversation with joost bosland

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tresses

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a r t i s t ’s b i o g r a p h y

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acknowledgements

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foreword joost bosland

The seed for Meschac Gaba’s exhibition at Michael Stevenson was sown when I saw his Tresses exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in early 2005. A year and a half later, Michael met Meschac at the São Paulo biennale and asked him to exhibit with us in Cape Town. It was soon decided that he would work on an exhibition of South African Tresses, and in November 2006 Meschac came to South Africa to do research on local architecture.

In one frantic week he visited and documented Cape Town, Tshwane and Johannesburg.

Hosting Meschac, and seeing this country through his eyes, was a great privilege.

Meredith Randall (then curator at Unisa) showed him around Tshwane and articulated what I had already sensed: that the way Meschac looks at our landscape differs radically

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from the way we have been taught to look. In Translating the world into softness, the interview published in this catalogue, one gets a glimpse of his extraordinary approach to the world and to his work.

Meschac’s exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg are evidence of a renewed engagement in South Africa with art from the rest of the continent. There cannot be a more appropriate artist to show in this context than Meschac Gaba. From 1996 onwards, his artistic career has mirrored and arguably anticipated curatorial debates about contemporary art from Africa. His Museum for Contemporary African Art made its debut when the journal Nka was still in its infancy, and years before curators like Salah Hassan and Okwui Enwezor became established names.

Meschac has also been at the vanguard of the increasingly nomadic nature of the art world. The way in which his Museum took shape through different rooms in different geographic locations at different times can be seen as a miniature replica of the global stage for art, where an ever-expanding programme of biennales has challenged the primacy of physical institutions. In the light of South Africa’s fraught relationship with the international art world, and with the biennale model in particular, it should be of interest how Meschac effortlessly negotiates the local and the global, with studios in Rotterdam and Benin, and projects all over the world.

Just as there cannot be a more appropriate artist, there cannot be a more appropriate partner for this project than the Johannesburg Art Gallery, which only recently hosted Africa Remix. Clive Kellner has widened South African horizons since he ran the Johannesburg project space Camouflage from 1999 to 2001, where he showed, among others, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Yinka Shonibare.

Meschac’s exhibitions in South Africa are significant, and suggest the momentum built up by recent exhibitions like Distant Relatives, Cape ‘07 and Africa Remix can be sustained.

None of this, however, should distract from the primary pleasure of engaging with Meschac’s sculpture. Dare to laugh at his silly ideas and wonder about his choice of materials. Try to see the world through his eyes.

Joost Bosland is Assistant Curator at Michael Stevenson

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foreword clive kellner

I first encountered the work of Meschac Gaba as a student enrolled in the curatorial programme at De Appel, a contemporary art centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Meschac was exhibiting his final-year presentation at the Rijksakademie – his artwork consisted of a puzzle game using the flags of various African nations which the audience could interact with. The work left an indelible impression on me.

My second encounter with Gaba’s work was at the National Museum of Accra, Ghana, at an exhibition titled South Meets West. Here Gaba presented the Museum Shop of his Museum of Contemporary African Art – a temporary structure located outside the gallery and selling various African objects.

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Eleven years after my first encounter with his work, the Johannesburg Art Gallery is pleased to host Tresses and other recent projects, Gaba’s first large-scale museum exhibition in Africa. At JAG this follows on from the recent Africa Remix (24 June to 30 September 2007) – the first time a major exhibition of contemporary African art was held in Africa.

Gaba’s career includes exhibitions at Tate Modern in London and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and participation in the 2003 Venice and 2006 São Paulo biennales. This exhibition showcases his most recent work: Colours of Cotonou – paintings that use Beninese banknotes as frames for found objects; Tresses – a series of braided wigs referencing iconic buildings in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tshwane; Glue Me Peace – a largescale installation taking its cue from Nobel Peace laureates; Home and the Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room – both of which present games that the viewer is invited to play.

Gaba’s works tend to provoke a destabilising experience, often unpacking serious and weighty subject matter with humour. The artist playfully negotiates the complicated terrain of identity politics and African nationality as part jester, part commentator.

The exhibition has been a collaboration between JAG and the Michael Stevenson gallery in Cape Town, and forms part of JAG’s ongoing commitment to profiling the work of South African and African artists to a broader public.

Clive Kellner is Head of the Johannesburg Art Gallery

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europe: that other african country khwezi gule

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During the Soccer World Cup in 2006, the French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen reportedly complained that his country’s team was not representative of France due to its majority of black players. While this might be interpreted as the use of race for political advantage, Le Pen’s statement reflects the views of large sections of the population not only in France but in Europe. This suggests that Europe is experiencing a crisis of identity precisely because it is Africanising. Since the post-war period Europe has become host to steadily growing African populations. The difference now is that these immigrant populations who could be rendered culturally invisible in the past are demanding equal visibility and audibility in all public spheres.

The Africanisation of Europe, while causing panic in some sectors, has been welcomed in others. A number of universities have recognised the need for African Studies within the academy, and some institutions have opened their doors not only to contemporary African art but to the discourses that surround it.

At the risk of overstretching the analogy between museums and places of worship, allow me to suggest that one can draw certain parallels between those African artists now living in Europe and the Christian missionaries who came to the African continent to spread the gospel. This analogy does however demand that we recognise the missionaries’ role as more complex than the regularly rehearsed trope of the coloniser with a gun in one hand and a bible in the other.

This new evangelism led by artists is not driven by the arrogance of racial, ideological and cultural superiority but by their insistent belief, even in the face of much evidence to the contrary, in the universality of human aspirations.

Meschac Gaba is one such artist. His work collapses national and cultural symbols such as flags, buildings, banknotes and hairstyles by being playful with them. He also excavates and satirises the more abstract cultural markers of history and memory.

The first work by Gaba that I encountered was a miniature city incorporating landmark buildings from various places around the world, made out of sugar. It had the Taj Mahal and the Empire State Building, as well as many buildings that look quite ordinary. The

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sugar-encrusted ‘city’ was completed during a residency in Recife, Brazil, and shown at the 27th São Paulo biennale. The work was beautiful and intriguing to look at, but when Gaba told me about the history of Recife I realised the extent of its conceptual coherence as well. Recife is a sugar-producing region that was colonised by the Portuguese and, for a period during the 17th century, captured by the Dutch as part of a bid to control the sugar economy.

Among the works on show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Glue Me Peace is a mammoth installation with three components: a series of video projections of the acceptance speeches of several Nobel Peace Prize recipients; a jukebox that plays the speeches; and a ‘bureau for peace’ from which the viewer can take a poster showing the flags of the different nationalities of the Nobel laureates. On the flags are quotes by the laureates.

From this perspective all nations are given the same status: whether rich or poor, mighty or small. The only qualification here is the nation’s contribution to peace.

In Tresses, Gaba uses traditional hair-braiding techniques to construct iconic buildings.

Like many of Gaba’s works, Tresses has a serial dimension. The project has been carried out in New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam and most recently South Africa, where Gaba selected buildings in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tshwane – among them the Good Hope Centre, Voortrekker Monument and Reserve Bank. Again the act of bringing together this constellation of buildings has the effect of flattening hierarchies. The work also underscores the ubiquity of hair salons servicing African immigrant communities and is again indicative of the colonisation of Europe by Africans.

I am not suggesting that this ‘civilising mission’ is the primary concern of diasporic artists but that it figures at the very least in their desire to claim space on equal terms with other artists working internationally. On another level, perhaps not quite self-consciously, there is an undercurrent in many works by diasporic artists that seeks to ‘educate’ or perhaps re-educate the West. In the work of Gaba there is a definite appeal to the best of the humanist impulse and the need to ‘spread the gospel’ of universal humanity.

Although I am not sure Gaba would agree with this analogy, I think even he would confess that he carries something of Africa with him wherever he goes, and transmits this to whatever artwork he makes, albeit with a sense of irony and humour. It is this

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unassuming yet subversive infiltration of the West using the tools of technology that constitutes this new form of evangelism.

Artists are often among those subjects of a country that have the greatest mobility and thus are exposed to different ways of life, different economies, and are in some ways more open-minded than their compatriots. In this regard they are perhaps quite different from the zealous missionaries we know.

Seen another way however, they, like the missionaries of old, can be as much exiles as they are pioneers who remain tethered through ideology or identity to the continent they left behind and that they still draw inspiration from.

I am never sure whether these artists are merely pronouncing a process that is already well underway or if they are indeed the vanguard of the movement; most likely a bit of both. Whatever the case it seems quite plausible that very soon we will be able to declare that Europe is that other African country.

Khwezi Gule is Curator: Contemporary Collections, Johannesburg Art Gallery

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Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room: Roulette 2000 installation view SMAK Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent

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Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room: Puzzle Tables Collection: SMAK, Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent

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Artist with American Inspiration: 4 World Financial Center 2004 digital print 46 x 109cm

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Artist with American Inspiration: Citigroup Center 2004 digital print 46 x 109cm

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Artist with African Inspiration: Porte de Non Retour 2004 digital print 45 x 88cm

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Artist with African Inspiration: Salle de Francophonie 2004 digital print 45 x 88cm

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Glue Me Peace 2005 installation view with peace messages left by visitors, Level 2 Gallery, Tate Modern, London

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Glue Me Peace

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Glue Me Peace 2005 installation detail jukebox with audio speeches of Nobel Peace laureates

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Glue Me Peace 2005 stills from video of Nobel Peace laureates

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Home 2006 carpet, chairs, dice installation view, Sydney Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

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Home: An instructional video 2006 stills from video duration 3 min 9 sec

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Colours of Cotonou 2007 Beninese banknotes, wooden frames, found objects, glass installation view, Centre Culturel Franรงais, Cotonou, Benin

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Colours of Cotonou 2007 Collection: Rabobank, Netherlands

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translating the world into softness meschac gaba in conversation with joost bosland

Joost Bosland: The Tresses series has mostly been discussed in terms of modernity, immigration, hybridity and the craft versus art debate. While these are important themes in your work, I think there are other aspects which have perhaps not received the attention they deserve. What about the use of humour that I sense in your work?

Meschac Gaba: It’s a pity people don’t discuss humour in my work; it’s one of the most important aspects. You know my personality, but if you don’t know my personality and you read what has been written about me, you might think I am a very serious person.

I like to have fun, and I like to be able to have fun with my work, and, in turn, I want the public to have fun with my work. When my anger shows in a piece, I consider it a bad work. For me, art is psychology, and I don’t want people to feel sad or frustrated.

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Of course, some of my works have political messages, but even then the first encounter should be lighthearted.

In the end, I want to be a happy artist, not a frustrated artist. That is my personal ambition. An artist has the opportunity to bring some happiness – we need this balance.

If you look at the world today a lot of people are sad about global terrorism and so on, and people look for balance, for something better. When I made Glue Me Peace at a moment of terrorism, I did not want to make a show about death, about religion. I keep seeing this in museums: artists using images of terrorists and terrorist acts, and I don’t like it; it is as if they are advertising terrorism. I prefer to look for peace. Let me also tell you that I hate blood. I don’t like violence.

The contemporary African art that is seen internationally is often topical, and often deals with the continent’s problems – war, disease, poverty, racism. Is it a conscious strategy for you to oppose this trend?

That is a curatorial issue. When someone visits an artist’s studio, they can find whatever they are looking for. If you are looking for heavy statements, you will find heavy statements. If you are looking for happiness, you can find happiness.

When you first had the idea of reproducing buildings in artificial hair, did you think of this as a joke?

When I work I like to engage with my physical location, in this case New York. The Tresses relate to the kind of work that people from West Africa were able to take with them and make a living from in America. These hairstyles have been embraced by American culture.

To that, I wanted to add the optimistic imagery of skyscrapers, which are also about success and ambition.

But it is also a silly idea.

That’s right, it’s drôle, it is a joke. But it is a good joke, not a bad joke. I like to think my projects through, analyse them extensively. In the end, however, I want to produce and show something simple and fun. When the audience comes in, I want them to be pulled

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in by my humour. Maybe later, when they start thinking about the work, they see more serious issues, but they don’t have to.

So are you saying you employ humour to seduce the audience into thinking about deeper issues?

I would not call it seduction. I am giving them an entry point. If the humour is all they see, that is fine by me. And in some ways the humour is the work. I make fun of everything.

I believe that art always reflects the personality of its creator, so if I have humour inside me, that will be reflected in my art. The work is part of my own identity. That is the way I see culture – I think about Meschac Gaba’s culture, not African culture. My culture incorporates everything I see, everything I learn. It is my mode de vie.

For my most recent exhibition in Benin, I told people I would like to do a painting show.

People were shocked, they told me I had moved on and wasn’t a painter anymore. But I just wanted to have fun and told people I could do whatever I wanted. They were very curious about what I would paint. So I told them I was not going to paint anything – everything was already there! I called the show Colours of Cotonou and it consisted of found colours (walls, clothing, etc), which I framed with frames made out of money. The word cadre in French can mean both ‘frame’ and ‘political boss’, so I liked the ambiguity and the suggestion of corruption. Anyway, when you first see the work, the pastels don’t look very African, but nobody can complain because I did not make them up myself – I found them in Benin. Afterwards, people came to me and told me it was the first time they had properly looked at their own country.

I made fun of painting, fun of originality. I know that in Europe many people have played with found objects, but in Benin it was relatively new and it was fun. It was interesting that when people saw the work back in the Netherlands, they loved it. Apparently the humour of the work was not lost in an environment where contemporary art practice is more widely understood.

This page, top SA Reserve Bank, Tshwane This page, bottom Disa Park, Cape Town Facing page The Good Hope Centre, Cape Town

When we imported three of your older Tresses to South Africa, the humour was lost on the customs officials, who insisted on classifying the objects as ‘hair products’, subject to a much higher duty than works of art. After much back and forth, a

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letter from you finally settled the matter [see opposite].

That is very amusing. It reminds me of a story about Marcel Duchamp who, in 1926, tried to import sculptures by Constantin Brancusi into the US. Bewildered, the customs officials refused to classify the work as art (which would have been duty free), and instead applied the tariff for manufactured objects of metal, which stood at 40%. It is also not the first time it has happened with my work; for my Ginger Bar that I showed in Venice in 2003, the commissioning institution was forced to pay a manufacturing tax for the drink I created to serve at the bar.

How would you describe your engagement with the sculptural process?

I would like to make a book one day about the way I work. The way I work is a long process. I start by writing down ideas – if you look around my studio, you see lots of paper; I write by hand. I will write out the same concept three or four times, every time making some changes; that’s the way I start thinking about the concept. When I start a new project, I send a proposal to the institution that will show the work so they can see what I am thinking and give me feedback. Afterwards, I look for material. When I was in New York, I looked for buildings that fitted into my project. I did the same for Cape Town and Johannesburg. [Gaba spent ten days in South Africa in November 2006 doing research for his new Tresses.] I documented many buildings in Johannesburg, but then I had to select buildings that would work as hair sculptures. I can’t make a shack out of hair because it wouldn’t work – it was skyscrapers that inspired me.

In South Africa you don’t have real skyscrapers, but the buildings have nice designs. The building that I got most excited about was the Unisa building that looks like a sewing machine. It has an interesting shape.

Given your engagement with form and process, do you think of yourself as a sculptor first and foremost?

I am not the kind of artist who sits around and sculpts all day. It is a complicated question, because I think and I make. But to me everything is sculpture, which would make me a sculptor. If you look at the paintings I make, they are really more sculptures

This page, top Metlife Building, Cape Town This page, bottom The Castle, Cape Town Facing page Faxed letter to customs

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than paintings. The bikes I made for Documenta 11 were also sculptures, moving sculptures. In the end, I am probably a sculptor but in a strange way.

So how do you make the Tresses? Do you make sketches first, architectural drawings?

No. I take pictures of the buildings and these function as my drawings. I then make the skeletons out of metal wire, and pass them on to real tresseuses who braid the hair onto the frame. I do these kinds of projects, projects that require studio work, in Benin. In Europe I work directly with institutions, but when a project requires me to work inside a studio with a team of assistants, I prefer to do this in Benin. These hair braiders use the same process that they would use for the real thing. At first it was difficult to explain what I wanted – they thought I was crazy. Now they ask me why I don’t make more Tresses, because they like making them and it is a good source of income. I have to explain that I don’t have a wig company in Holland but that I am an artist and this is just an art project.

I don’t own a hair business.

From a sculptural perspective, how did you engage with the South African architecture you encountered?

Of course, buildings in Johannesburg are not the same as buildings in Paris or New York.

At the same time, you’ll find that many forms are being copied. For the 2006 São Paulo biennale I made an imaginary city out of sugar, using hundreds of existing buildings to create one new city. It included many buildings from Benin but people did not recognise them as such. When someone told me, ‘I do not see any buildings from Benin’, I replied, ‘That is because you have an idea in your head of what a Beninese building ought to look like.’ I pointed them out to him: a Catholic church, a basilica, more than 20 buildings in total. He did not recognise them as Beninese because he identified the shapes with Rome.

When looking at contemporary architecture it is easy to get things mixed up – people This page, top 11 Diagonal Street, Johannesburg This page, bottom 2 Loop Street, Cape Town Facing page Voortrekker Monument, Tshwane

copy everything. I already saw a bridge here in Holland of which I had seen smaller copies in South Africa. I play along with this game. At times, when people asked me if a specific building was a Parisian one, I would tell them it was based on a Dutch building,

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and explain where they could find it in Holland, even though it really was from Paris.

I wanted to use a specific Brazilian building as a model for a bar for a big new installation that I am working on. Then I found a building with the same shape right here in my neighbourhood in Rotterdam, so I could just photograph that for my project. It was much smaller, but formally they were the same. In Brazil it is a big tower, but here in Holland it is a small building. If I had not been working on my project, I would have never noticed that they looked the same.

In South Africa we are accustomed, even conditioned, to look at architecture in terms of its social, economic and political history. You seem to look primarily at formal aspects of the buildings you recreate, which is, in a strange way, quite subversive in our landscape.

I am not sure I agree. Buildings contain within their shape all these socio-historic factors.

But you’re right, I don’t like my work to be overly serious, I like to break it up – I like to have fun, to include both historic sites and hotels. Whether I work with the Castle or with a building that is a hotel, they both have a specific history and they both give shelter to human beings in their own way. Take for example the Voortrekker Monument. When you go inside it is a very heavy building, an emotion-laden space. Hair is a symbol for vanity but also for love, because of its softness. So recreating such a heavy building in a soft, tender material breaks its power. It is the same with my approach to terrorism – in our world everything is heavy, which is why I like to bring softness into the world. I have used sugar for my sculpture at the São Paulo biennale; another medium that I hope to use soon is water. I like to translate the world into softness.

Rotterdam, 19 June 2007 Cape Town, 15 August 2007

This page Sentech Tower, Johannesburg Facing page Unisa Building, Tshwane

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Tresses 2007 installation view, Michael Stevenson gallery, Cape Town

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Disa Park, Cape Town 76 x 20 x 37cm All Tresses 2007 braided artiďŹ cial hair and mixed media

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Sentech Tower, Johannesburg 93 x 27 x 27cm

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11 Diagonal Street, Johannesburg 63 x 21 x 31cm

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Unisa Building, Tshwane 76 x 20 x 37cm

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SA Reserve Bank Building, Tshwane 61 x 30 x 30cm

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2 Loop Street, Cape Town 59 x 32 x 32cm

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Voortrekker Monument, Tshwane 60 x 28 x 28cm

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Metlife Centre, Cape Town 60 x 36 x 22cm

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Good Hope Centre, Cape Town 25 x 43 x 43cm

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Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town 36 x 52 x 52cm

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Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town (detail)

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Tresses 2007 installation view at exhibition opening, Michael Stevenson gallery, Cape Town, 16 August 2007

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DĂŠfilĂŠ de Perruques 2006 stills from video of performance Paris, 23 April 2006

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meschac gaba

Born in Cotonou, Benin, 1961 Lives and works in the Netherlands and Benin

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EDUCATION 1996-7 Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007

Tresses, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2006

Tresses, inIVA, London, UK DĂŠfilĂŠ de perruques, Paris, France Glue Me Peace, Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway

2005

Museum of Contemporary African Art: Library of the Museum, BiblioNova, Geleen, Netherlands Glue Me Peace, Tate Modern, London, UK Le Pain Migrateur, Artra Gallery, Milan, Italy Meschac Gaba: Tresses, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA Peace Maker, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2004

Peace Maker, Ernest G Welch School of Art & Design, Gallery of the Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

2003 2002

Atlantique, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands Museum of Contemporary African Art: Library of the Museum, Falaki Gallery, American University of Cairo, Egypt Museum of Contemporary African Art: Museum Shop for Sale and Museum Living Room for Sale, Artra Gallery, Milan and Genoa, Italy Museum of Contemporary African Art: Music Room, SBK (Stichting Beeldende Kunst) Tramremise, Amsterdam, Netherlands Museum of Contemporary African Art: Living Room of the Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

2001

Museum of Contemporary African Art: Marriage Room, Inova, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Museum of Contemporary African Art: Library of the Museum, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands Der Inforaum/The Info-room, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland

2000

Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room, Crown Gallery, Brussels, Belgium Spielregeln/Rules of the Game, Galerie Gebauer, Berlin, Germany

1999

Vente en gros et detaille, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Museum of Contemporary African Art: Summer Collection, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands Museum of Contemporary African Art: Game Room, Le Pavé Dans La Mare, Besançon, France Museum of Contemporary African Art: Museum Restaurant, W139, Amsterdam, Netherlands 1998

Missing Links/Museum of Contemporary African Art: Draft Room, Praterinsel, Munich, Germany Museum of Contemporary African Art, De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam, Netherlands Museum of Contemporary African Art: Architecture of the Museum, Gate Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands Meschac Gaba, SBK knsm-eiland, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1997

Moneta Exotica. Oorspronkelijk geld uit de hele wereld/Museum of Contemporary African Art: Draft Room, Rijksmuseum Het Koninklijk Penningkabinet, Leiden, Netherlands Bazar Bizar, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1995

Palace of the President of Benin, Pour la Francophonie festival, Cotonou, Benin

1991

Meschac Gaba, Centre Culturel Français de Cotonou, Cotonou, Benin

TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2006

Meschac Gaba/Hermann Pitz: Tresses, Galerie Fernand Leger, Ivry, Paris, France

2001

Ensemble: Michel François & Meschac Gaba, Galerie Lumen Travo, Amsterdam, Netherlands

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007

Africa Remix, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2006

São Paulo Bienal: How to Live Together, São Paulo, Brazil Gwangju Biennale: Fever Variations, South Korea Sydney Biennale: Contact Zones, Sydney, Australia De Kleine Biennale, Fort op de Ruigenhoeksedijk, Utrecht, Netherlands Africa Remix, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Havana Biennale, Cuba Global Tour, W139, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Respect! Formes de cohabitation, Musée Dar Si Saïd, Marrakech, Morocco 2005

Overtures – on Water, City of Munich, Art Circolo Kunstprojekt, Munich, Germany Africa Remix, Hayward Gallery, London, UK Identità & Nomadismo, Palazzo delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy Africa Remix, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, France Monuments for the USA, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA La Triennale di Milano: Dressing Ourselves, Milan, Italy

2004

Horizons, Museum of World Cultures, Göteborg, Sweden Economies, Art and Gallery, Milan, Italy Strange Planet, Ernest G Welch School of Art & Design, Gallery of the Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA A Fiction of Authenticity, Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Africa Remix, Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany Visa for Thirteen, International Studio Program exhibition, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, USA Les Afriques, Le Tri Postal, Lille/Cultural Capital of Europe, France We Are The World/Rotterdam Edition of Dutch Pavillion at Venice Biennale, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands Open Studio, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, USA

2003

Fiction of Authenticity, Forum of Contemporary Art, St Louis, Missouri, USA Water, Amsterdamse Duinwaterleidingen, Amsterdam, Netherlands Exhibition of Exhibitions, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York, USA We Are The World, Dutch Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy Plasticiens en Mouvement/Kunstenaars in Beweging, De Markten, Brussels, Belgium

2002

Artists’ Games, Public’s Games, Kunstverein Ulm, Germany Documenta11, Kassel, Germany Geld und Währung/Das letzte Tabu, Expo, Switzerland

2001

Art 32 Basel, Switzerland Locus/Focus, Sonsbeek 2001, Arnhem, Netherlands Geldlust: ModellBanking, Kunsthalle Tirol, Tirol, Austria National Slavery Monument, City Hall, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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Réalité Revisitée: Expérimenter le Réel, Cimaise & Portique centre departmental d’art contemporain, Albi, France Mirror’s Edge, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland Red Ribbon Art, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands 2000

Mirror’s Edge, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy For Real, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands Taipei Biennale: The Sky is the Limit, Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan L’Art dans le Monde, Paris Musées/Revue des Beaux Arts, Pont Alexandre III, Paris, France East/International, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, UK Play-use, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands A Casa Di, Cittadellarte/Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy Continental Shift. A voyage between cultures, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Netherlands Worthless (invaluable): The concept of value in contemporary art, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia Mirror’s Edge, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

1999

Mirror’s Edge, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden South Meets West, National Museum of Ghana, Accra, Ghana Waardige Zaken. Wonderkamers, De Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem, Netherlands Le Pavé Dans La Mare, Besançon, France TroubleSpot.Painting, NICC and MUHKA, Antwerp, Belgium Trafique, SMAK extra muros, Ghent, Belgium Unlimited.nl-2, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1998

Copy Culture. 40 Jaar Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1997

Open Ateliers, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands Blueprint, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1996

Rasa Foundation, Utrecht, Netherlands Open Ateliers, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1995

Ewole, Lome, Togo

1994

Biennale d’Abidjan, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

1993

Biennale de Dakar, Galerie Ife, Dakar, Senegal

1992

Arts sur 7 SOS Artistes, Halle des Sports, Cotonou, Benin

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RESIDENCIES 2006

Recife, Brazil, in preparation for the São Paulo Biennale

2005

Couvent des Récollets, Paris, France

2003/4 PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York AWARDS 2002

Will Grohmann Preis, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany AICA Award, International Association of Art Critiques

MONOGRAPHS Meschac Gaba: Tresses (The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 2005) Library of the Museum/Bibliothèque du Musée, Vol 1, Museum of Contemporary African Art (Artimo Foundation, Amsterdam, 2001) WEBSITES Tresses: www.gabatresses.org Museum of Contemporary African Art: www.museumofcontemporaryafricanart.com Meschac Gaba’s Adji Game: www.imal.org/gaba

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acknowledgements

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This project would not have been possible without Warren Siebrits, Meredith Randall, Kerryn Greenberg and Hein Kortman. Meschac Gaba gives particular thanks to Alexandra Gaba-van Dongen, Delphine Bonou, Claude Acodehou, John Loose and Willem Vermaasse. Thanks to all the sta at Michael Stevenson, in particular Joost Bosland and Sophie Perryer, and to Gabrielle Guy, Ray du Toit, Mario Todeschini and John Hodgkiss for their work on the catalogue. Special thanks to IFAS for supporting this project.

Clive Kellner, Head of Johannesburg Art Gallery, thanks the Mondriaan Foundation for their contribution to the exhibition and catalogue; the sta at JAG, especially Khwezi Gule, Curator of Contemporary Collections; Joyce Mashile, Adminstrator; Jo Burger, Librarian; Reshma Chiba, Curator Exhibitions; Jeannine Howse, Registrar; Marian Paulik, Conservator; Tshidiso Makheta, Curator Education; Tiny Malefane, Public Programmes; Mpho Kumeke, Assistant Curator Exhibitions; William Mabidilala, Technician; and Samson Matentji, Supervisor Museum Assistant; the Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, in particular Fiona Graham and Louisa Moledi; the guides at JAG: Heleen Beyers, Marguerite Prins, Bea Fenn, Mary Murray, Lorraine Deift, Pamela Quinn, Bea Katz, Gill Sagar; Bridget van Oerle of Buz Media and Maria Fidel Regueros, Special Projects Coordinator.

Meschac Gaba is represented by Gallery Continua San Gimignano, Italy Michael Stevenson Cape Town, South Africa Gallery Lumen Travo Amsterdam, the Netherlands Galleria Artra Milan, Italy

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Published on the occasion of exhibitions at

Published by Michael Stevenson and the Johannesburg Art Gallery Supported by Institut Français d’Afrique du Sud, the Embassy of France in South Africa and the Mondriaan Foundation © Meschac Gaba and the authors Cape Town, 2007

Michael Stevenson Gallery Hill House, De Smidt Street, Green Point Cape Town 8005 South Africa tel +27 (0)21 421 2575 fax +27 (0)21 421 2578 info@michaelstevenson.com 16 August - 15 September 2007

ISBN 978-0-620-39822-0 Editor Sophie Perryer Designer Gabrielle Guy Photography Cape Town buildings and Tresses: Mario Todeschini; Johannesburg and Tshwane buildings: John Hodgkiss; Glue Me Peace: J. Fernandes; Game Room: Dirk Pauwels; Colours of Cotonou: Meschac Gaba; Home: An instructional video: Abigail Moncreiff Image repro Ray du Toit Printer Hansa Print

Johannesburg Art Gallery King George Street, Joubert Park Johannesburg 2001 South Africa tel +27 (0)11 725 3130 fax +27 (0)11 720 6000 clivek@joburg.org.za 6 November 2007 - 31 January 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publishers of the book.

MICHAEL STEVENSON