BARTHÉLÉMY TOGUO

“IN MEMORIUM ROSA PARKS”

Charity sale
from Wednesday March 9th to Friday April 15th 2022

It was the opportunity to support the project of Barthélémy Toguo’s monumental installation reproducing Rosa Parks’ house for the 2022 Dakar Biennale by acquiring a limited edition exceptionally created for the project!

A socially engaged project in memory of Rosa Parks, the civil rights pioneer, that echoes the Black Lives Matter movement and people’s fight for freedom around the world.

With the support of Hafida Jemni Di Folco, curator, Lelong & Co. gallery and Thanks for Nothing

BARTHÉLÉMY TOGUO

“IN MEMORIUM ROSA PARKS”

Charity sale from Wednesday March 9th to Friday April 15th 2022

Support Barthélémy Toguo’s monumental installation reproducing Rosa Parks’ house for the 2022 Dakar Biennale by acquiring a limited edition exceptionally created for the project!

A socially engaged project in memory of Rosa Parks, the civil rights pioneer, that echoes the Black Lives Matter movement and people’s fight for freedom around the world.

With the support of Hafida Jemni Di Folco, curator, Lelong & Co. gallery and Thanks for Nothing

“The blue ‘B.Toguo’, designed by Barthélémy Toguo at the Manufacture de Sèvres, intermittently illuminates the person of Rosa Parks. It symbolizes spirituality, thought, infinity, emptiness, eternity, and transparency. Blue inspires inner calm, promotes imagination and dreams, it is also the allegory of peace.
Each print will be individually enhanced with charcoal through different gestures to enhance texture and confer the unique and personalized character of the edition.”

Hafida Jemni Di Folco, curator

Key dates:

• 09/3/22 to 15/4/22 – Project fund-raising: sale of prints and donations
• 12/4/22 to 18/5/22 – Production of the work: construction of the Rosa Parks House for the Dakar Biennale
• 19/5/22 to 21/06/22 – Dakar Biennale

“In light of the Contemporary African Art Biennale in Dakar (Dak’Art 2022), Barthélémy Toguo addresses an unusual event: the auction of Rosa Parks’ house and its displacement to Europe to evoke the memory of the civil rights pioneer.
From now on, the artist’s challenge is to rebuild the house of the icon Rosa Parks in Dakar. The goal is to deploy his creative force through his imagination by integrating his translation of the unfolding story within the house.
It is a cubic house (7m x 7m x 7m) on 2 levels, several openings and a garden with a rotating perimeter of 2 meters. Never-before-seen works will be displayed throughout the space. Barthélémy Toguo wishes to include this work in his political research.
He appropriates the house of Rosa Parks, like a paradigm of a contemporary woman through a prism that reveals the outline of a double repair:
– Bring the memory of Rosa Parks back to life during a plural event, whose imprint of the first Negro art festival in 1966 is indelible
– A return to the land of origins. The Museum of Black Civilizations pays her a permanent tribute on its wall of powerful women. A strong sign against the denial of memory.
Undoubtedly, within the framework of the Doxantu, a stroll along the edge of the cliff puts Rosa Parks back in the living. Relevance! The theme of the installation is in line with the DOXANTU in Dak’Art 2022 proposal.”

Hafida Jemni Di Folco, curator

Barthélémy Toguo is a Cameroonian artist born in 1967 in M’Balmayo (Cameroon). He lives between Paris and Bandjoun.

After studying at the School of Fine Arts from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, he was admitted to the Ecole Supérieure of art in Grenoble, where he continued his artistic apprenticeship, which he finishes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf. He also works with video, engraving, photography, painting, drawing and sculpture, as well as installation and performance.

Barthélémy Toguo is represented by the Lelong & Co gallery, Paris and New York and the Nosbaum gallery Reding, Luxembourg.
He is appointed as one of UNESCO’s Artists for Peace for 2021 – 2023.

The project is curated by art historian Hafida Jemni Di Folco. Expert in the marketing and dissemination of contemporary works of art, she is Director of the Africa department at the Higher Institute of Art (IESA) in Paris, where she is also Professor of International Civilization and Contemporary Art of Africa and its Diaspora.

Independent curator and author of exhibitions and seminars in France and abroad, Hafida Jemni Di Folco is also a critic, and contributes to several specialized journals such as IAM (Guest editor of the last Nigeria Special Issue), Afrikadaa, AMA , ArtsHebdoMédia, Christian Testimony (TC).

She has been working with Barthélémy Toguo since 2016. This collaboration has enabled the realization of several projects:

– 2016 African Art Book Fair / Bandjoun Station editions / Dakar Biennale 2016
– 2018 Dakar Biennale, Fahrenheit 451 A Book is my hope / Tribute to the manuscripts of Timbuktu
– 2020 Busan Biennale / Parts I to VIII / Beyond Fahrenheit 451, a Book is My Hope
– 2021 Lelong & Co Gallery: Sharing / Tribute to Edmond Jabès
– 2022 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale / Doxantu Project / In Memorium Rosa Parks

14th edition of the Dakar Biennale: 59 artists and artist collectives to forge a new common destiny

Create, imagine and invent. It is around this triptych that the official international exhibition of the 14th edition of the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar (May 19-June 21, 2022) will take place.

The official selection, consistent with the orientations of the Artistic Direction, will highlight the works of 59 visual artists and artist collectives. They come from Africa and its diaspora. According to Dr El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, Artistic Director of the 2022 Edition, the theme Ĩ Ndaffa# sounds like an exhortation to create a new common destiny, a future together.