Meschac Gaba (born 1961) is a Beninese conceptual artist based in
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...
and
Cotonou. His
installations of everyday objects whimsically juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and commerce. He is best known for ''The Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002'', an autobiographical 12-room installation acquired and displayed by the
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
in 2013. He has also exhibited at the
Studio Museum in Harlem and at the 2003
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
.
Early life and career
Meschac Gaba was born in
Cotonou, Benin, in 1961. He had drifted from his training as a painter until a bag of decommissioned money cut into confetti led him to make paintings with the material. Gaba became known for his installations of everyday objects that whimsically juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and commerce.
He held a residency at the Amsterdam
Rijksakademie
The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) was founded in 1870 in Amsterdam. It is a classical academy, a place where philosophers, academics and artists meet to test and exchange ideas and knowledge. The school support ...
in 1996 for two years. In the absence of opportunities to display his work in the city, he set out over the next five years to make his own museum. This piece became his seminal ''The Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002'', which consists of 12 rooms (some based on museum function and others personal) filled with objects made by Gaba. Throughout the exhibition ran a vein of confessional narrative about the artist's art travails between Africa and Europe. The wedding room, which he made while in love, holds mementos as museum artifacts from Gaba's wedding to the Dutch curator Alexandra van Dongen in 2000 at the Amsterdam
Stedelijk Museum. The Library room holds
art books
Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.
Overview
Artists' books have employed a ...
and tells of Gaba's childhood. The games room showed
sliding puzzle
A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide (frequently flat) pieces along certain routes (usually on a board) to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to ...
tables that form African national flags. It had its own
gift shop
A gift shop or souvenir shop is a store primarily selling souvenirs, memorabilia, and other items relating to a particular topic or theme. The items sold often include coffee mugs, stuffed animals, toys, t-shirts, postcards, handmade collec ...
and café. The exhibited ''Museum'' had couches for reading, a piano for playing, and featured objects reflecting Africa's polycultural character, including Ghanaian money featuring the face of
Picasso, a Swiss bank mimicking an African
street market
A marketplace or market place is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a ''souk'' (from the Arabic lang ...
, and gilded ceramic chicken legs.
The ''Museum'' exhibited widely. The work was first displayed in part in 2002 at
Documenta 11. Gaba received a Rotterdam space in which he could live and store the work. When his son requested a more normal house, Gaba sold and gifted most of the work to the
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
, save for his Library, which Gaba returned to his hometown. Around 2013, Gaba lived half the year in his hometown of Cotonou and the other half in Rotterdam with his wife and son. The Tate Modern displayed the work as a whole in 2013 as part of the Tate's two-year program of African-focused exhibitions. The wedding room enchanted the British
art critic Jonathan Jones, who described the ''Museum'' as autobiographical, novelistic, protest showing "the strength of modern African art". For instance, the Art and Religion room showed "classic" African ceremonial sculpture alongside kitschy Buddhist and Christian objects, as if to group the types together as poor representations of their respective cultures. Gaba saw the work as correcting lacks of art education in Africa and African art representation outside the continent.
In-between finishing the ''Museum'' and its Tate exhibition, Gaba presented at the 2003
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
and held his first solo show in the United States at the
Studio Museum in Harlem, "Tresses", a series of architectural models of New York City and Benin landmarks made from artificial braided
hair extensions
Artificial hair integrations, more commonly known as hair extensions, hair weaves, and fake hair add length and fullness to human hair. Hair extensions are usually clipped, glued, or sewn on natural hair by incorporating additional human or syn ...
. The accessory, popularized by African-American pop stars based on West African culture, was repatriated to Africa. Gaba worked with a Beninese hair braider to make the sculptures from his photographs.
Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Life and work
Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...
wrote in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' that the works were "delightful" and recognizable without becoming caricatures.
Gaba held his first solo gallery show, "Exchange Market", in New York in 2014. On the ground floor, 10 sculptures of unvarnished wood tables each with a wire umbrella stand, from which African banknotes hung. Each table was associated with a type of commodity: cotton, cocoa, diamonds. Along the walls hung bank-shaped works made of wood,
plexiglass
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...
, and decommissioned money. Upstairs, reminiscent of the games room of Gaba's museum, were four
foosball
Table football, also known as foosball, table soccer, futbolito in Mexico, Taca Taca in Chile and Metegol in Argentina is a table-top game that is loosely based on association football. The aim of the game is to move the ball into the opponen ...
tables and small souvenir sculptures such as hand-painted
cricket bats and a miniature billiards table.
''
Artsy
Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage. Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them. It utilizes a search engine and database to draw conn ...
'' selected Gaba's work as a highlight of the 2014
1:54 London art fair.
Selected exhibitions
* "Exchange Market", Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City, 2014
* "Museum of Contemporary African Art",
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
, 2013
* "Tresses",
Studio Museum in Harlem, 2005
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaba, Meschac
1961 births
Artists from Rotterdam
Beninese artists
Conceptual artists
Living people
People from Cotonou