BARTHÉLÉMY TOGUO 

Barthélémy Toguo was born in Cameroon in 1967 and studied Fine Art in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He moved to Europe in 1993 and began exhibiting and doing performances while finishing his studies in Grenoble (France), then Dusseldorf (Germany).

Political geography and personal boundaries have been an implicit subject in his studio work and an explicit one in his performances. On one hand, his watercolours provide a strong visual beats, using a limited repertory of images and colours to depict a dreamy world of human, animal and vegetal metamorphosis. On the other hand, the facture of his large scale installations is generally rough and quick and underline humans conflicts, paradoxes and extremism. His deft appropriations may be seen as an inversion of the historic pillaging Africa underwent during the colonial period.

Toguo recently had a solo exhibition, “The Sick Opera”, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The show included his work from 1999 to 2004. He has exhibited in many other prestigious museum, galleries and Biennials internationally such as The Bass Museum of Art in Miami, Centre George Pompidou in Paris, The Houston Museum of Art, The Guangdong Museum of Art, The Migros Museum in Zurich and The Palazzo Strozzi in Florence for the past four years.