Artist Thierry Oussou returns to Lumen Travo Gallery with the solo exhibition Equilibrium Wind, which presents a completely new body of work, developed by the artist in Benin. Part of an on-going project initiated by Oussou in recent years, this show addresses the cotton plantations located in the district of Panouignan in Benin and the significant impact they have on the country's economic growth.
Cotton is an important African product in the globalized arena. Beside its highly symbolic reference to a colonial history of oppression, the “white gold” is featured in international discourses and debates on privatisation, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development.
Far from being just a raw material, cotton embodies a precious tool for Beninese working class, offering a dignified and fair life to those cultivating it. Oussou’s multi-layered investigation stands as a reminder of the overlooked potential of this material.
After gaining first-hand experience by cultivating cotton himself, Oussou translates this very knowledge into the creation of the works featured in the exhibition, consisting in a new series of paintings, a video and several installations.
The paintings are inspired by the lives of Beninese men and women working in the cotton plantations. Oussou paints exclusively on black paper and favours large-scale formats. Distorted figures, faces, objects and symbols float freely against the dark background of the paper.
In this series of portraits his distinctively gestural style with drips, scratches, splatters and calligraphic marks aims to recreate the dynamics of the movements taking place in the cotton plantations and , in a broader sense, in all those settings where the workers act.
The video, filmed in Benin, serves as documentation for this on-going research project, showing the cotton field the artist has nurtured in recent years and sharing with
us the visual tale of such experience.
The wooden crates spread around the gallery space contain the cotton taken from Oussou’s plantations, offering us the chance to observe and interact with the raw material brought from Benin. The aim is to obliterate the distance between creation and consume, in order to give visibility the workers, while raising awareness about the different stages of cotton production.
From the plantations to the comfort of our homes, from the unprocessed material to the manifactured clothes that we wear every day, Oussou points out the sequence of actions that we, as consumers, often forget about.
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In his artistic practice, Thierry Oussou (BJ, 1988) shows great interest in professions that are marginalised and overlooked. From cotton workers to public transport drivers, his visual investigation aims to emphasise, or rather turn visible the different terms of labour that exist, and how they affect the society we live in.
In 2015-16 Oussou was resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2018 he was awarded with the Tollman Award.
Recent exhibitions include: Aichi Triennale, Japan (upcoming, 2022); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (upcoming, 2023); Art contemporain du Bénin, Palais de la Marina Cotonou (2022); Oude Kerk , Amsterdam (2020); Impossible is Nothing, Art Exchange, Essex (2019); Saõ Paulo Biennal (2019); 10th Berlin Biennale (2018).