MIDDELHEIMMUSEUM
Pascale Marthine Tayou’s litte paradise

26/5- 15/9

Dirk Schrijvers

Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon °1967) trained as a lawyer but abandoned his studies in the mid-1990’s for art. This self-taught artist lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. He is part of a generation of African artists who tackle post-colonial issues by mixing the experiences they have of their countries with those of the western world. He is a nomad in the use of materials, in his artistic sources, and in the way he thinks.
Cameroun is always present in his work. “This relationship has to do with the question of origins.
Cameroon is my ‘trademark’, where everything started. I was born and raised there, by my parents, my friends, and the street. I want to include all that in my work.” His works raise significant issues concerning Africa, such as the construction of cultural and national identity, relations between rulers and ruled, and exchanges between North and South.”
His work varies between installations, sculpture, video, photography and drawing and reveasl the atmosphere of the African metropolis. A hallmarked in his works is the use of recycled materials, like colored plastic objects and bags, rags, old clothes, reject objects and wrecked cars and is a comment on issues of the global circulation of goods, consumption and waste. The iconic work “Pastic bags” (Figure 1) shows the enormity of pollution due to plastics, which is becoming a real threat for marine wild life.

Since his debut as an artist, Pascale Marthine Tayou has participated in a number of international
exhibitions such as Documenta 11 (Kassel, 2002), Münsterland Sculpture Biennial (Münster, 2003) and various biennials: Istanbul (2003), Lyons (2005), Venice (2005 and 2009), and Havana (2006). He exhibited his work in different museums and exhibition spaces all over the world such as the Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Grand Palais in Paris, SFAI in San Francisco, Talpiot Beit Benit Congress Centre in Jerusalem, Tate Britain in London, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Toulouse, and the Hayward Gallery in London. He had solo exhibitions at MACRO (Rome, 2004), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, Belgium, 2004), MART (Herford, Germany, 2005), Milton Keynes Gallery (Milton Keynes, UK, 2007), Château de Blandy Les Tours (Blandy Les Tours, France 2008), Benedengalerie Culturcentrum (Kortrijk, Belgium, 2009), the International Film Festival (Rotterdam, Holland, 2010), Malmö Konsthall (Malmö, Sweden), Gare Saint-Sauveur, lille3000 (Lille, France), Goethe Institut Johannesburg (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2010), and MAC (Lyons, France) in 2011.

Glass in the work of Pascale Marthine Tayou
In 2010, he developed a series of statues in glass based on the iconography of African idols: les
“Poupées Pascale”. The Dolls are statues and human heads, attired in feather, fabric and small crystal objects. They would have been fetish, if they were made of dark wood instead of limpid crystal. They play on the contrast between their wooden base and the precious crystal; between ancient ritual ancestral and its contemporary rerouting. “Carving masks and statues in crystal is my last chance to see into the mystery of fetishes but I have been waiting to do that ever since my first sculpture. I can’t penetrate the African mask which in spite of my efforts seems endlessly unfathomable. “
Another theme he is being explored now is the concept of the african “L’arbre à palabre “, the place, in which in African villages the elderly discuss the situation and future of the people of the village. He made a “talking tree” for the “Pommery Experience: The Factory Sound”, in Reims, France , a yearly contemporary art exhibition(Figure 3). The exhibit explores the process of poetic production of sound and object manipulation, with a referral to his previous work of use of plastic waste. In the group exhibition ‘My Little Paradise’ (Mijn kleine paradijs) in the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp,
Belgium he shows an installation also referring to the “L’arbre à palabre “ He created a metal construction referring to the place where the discussions are taking place. The diamond shape containers hold pieces of glass referring to the wonders that sometimes come up during this discussions and that have made African societies to survive for hundreds of years.
The African influence is always present in the work of this artist unrelated to the material he uses. He further explores the possibilities of different materials to makes his views and feelings accessible for the viewer.

The exhibition at the Middelheim park runs from 26.05.2013 until 15.09.2013

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