PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU, BONNE NOUVELLES: PILEVNELI | YALIKAVAK

 

Pascale Martine Tayou combines mysterious human forms, fantastical creatures and authentic fictions with fabric, wood, plastic, glass, organic matter and consumer waste with an extraordinary skill. Born in 1966 in Cameroon, Africa and based in Belgium, the artist began exhibiting in the early 1990s, a period of political upheaval in West Africa. Tayou is mostly known for his versatile and dynamic pieces that transcend specific mediums or themes. At the beginning of his career, he deliberately added the letter "e" to his first name and the letter "h" to his second name, giving the appearance of a female name, thus using irony to move away from gender-focused distinctions of being a male or female artist. This also serves as a stance against discrimination based on a particular geographical or cultural origin.

Tayou approaches the ongoing discrimination and problems of the postcolonial era in a satirical manner in his artworks, focusing on archetypes, traditional crafts, individual/national identity, and global consumption. Ancient legacies are never far from Tayou's compositions, but they are always integrated into the concrete present. In addition to themes that reference nationalism, exile, migrations, and global migration relations, they also reflect the imaginative ways communities living in a specific region envision different worlds and perspectives. The artworks, which allude to individuals/communities constantly moving around the world and always containing movement, continue to examine the theme of the 'global village' from various perspectives and explore urban and global realities. Color in Tayou's visual language, on the other hand, carries both a joyful and political meaning; “Color brings a smile to people’s faces,” explains Tayou; “It celebrates life and affects me like a vitamin… The different variants of color are symbols of opening, they evoke all possible identities…”

 

The first work of the Chalks Waves series, titled "Chalks Waves-A," consists of chalks that Tayou uses to create complex patterns resembling the decorative schemes of traditional wall carpets in his homeland, Cameroon. Tayou's use of chalk, both as a medium and as a raw material, directly alludes to the very process of artistic creation. Conceived as a fresco, this work is part of a larger body of work in which Tayou imbues pieces of chalk. As Pascale Marthine Tayou explains: "I am not outside the world, I am inside it - so I use its tools. The world is my studio." He diverts objects from their conventional uses in order to recontextualise them within his sensory exploration of colour, plasticity and form. Tayou believes that this reimagining of the everyday objects encourages the viewer to think again about the materials used in his works: “Contemplation can breed seriousness. You just have to give the mind time to perceive it. For me, the white and coloured pieces of chalk refer to childhood memories and the school world. But even the joy and lightness inspired by the colours of the chalk pieces cannot completely hide the wounds and cuts caused by those years of learning. Often, to our cost, there is what we learn at school on the one hand, and what life teaches us on the other,” he says, expressing the meaning of this material for him and the symbol that it has become.

 

Pascale's Dolls draw inspiration from an incident during Tayou's trip to Venice, where he initially mistook a Murano glass vase for an African tribal sculpture. The artist's sculptural glass figures are covered with a multitude of different materials, including coffee and chocolate powder, textile threads, plant fibers, cloth animals, bone necklaces, stones, feathers and colored straws, pearls, eggs and chalk. Interpreting totemic African figures, these elegant and intriguing sculptures sometimes represent bodies enduring pain and suffering, sometimes displacement and despair; in Tayou's poetic approach, the tension between pristine crystalline bodies and fragmented, stained objects taken from everyday life reveals the difficulties, contradictions and struggles that humanity tirelessly produces for the sake of authority and prosperity. The nature and origin of the materials vary greatly, combining artisanal and industrial production, rural and urban contexts, tradition and progress. Les Poupées is a perfect example of the process of creolization* as defined and theorized by Édouard Glissant, a process that has taken root in our contemporary society and can be defined as “mixing up of arts and languages that produces the unexpected […], a space in which dispersal allows for rapprochements, in which cultural shocks, disharmonies, disorder and interference become creative forces.”*

*Note: "Creolization" refers to the blending and fusion of different cultures and influences to create new and unique cultural forms and expressions.

 

Bantus or Bantu peoples are ethnic groups of people living in sub-Saharan Africa who speak the Bantu language. These languages, estimated to number around four hundred and fifty, are present in most of the African continent. Pascale Marthine Tayou uses fabrics to create new narratives in the image of these various languages and cultures. Here composite paintings are made of various fabrics, with cuts and seams emphasized. The main material of this series, which began during Covid-related travel restrictions, is towels, reflecting their softness and tranquility, akin to the serenity of a home. The cut pieces of other fabrics are remnants from his stylist wife's workshop. The artist cherishes vibrant colors and anthropomorphic forms, reflecting the liveliness and dynamism in his works, always leaving room for potential transformations in the future. By reusing selected materials from his wife, Tayou compares home not only to a cocoon image but also to a meeting and sharing space where renewal can emerge through dialogue.

 

One of Tayou's series of works created by shaping everyday/waste objects is the Plastic Bags series. For instance, the 2018 artwork "Plastic Tree" is a site-specific installation featuring various colored disposable plastic bags attached to wooden branches bent like limbs. These works capture the essence of Tayou's exploration of urban environments with their grime, constant waste, and vibrant colors. The plastic bags are viewed as temporary, accidental, and instrumental objects, usually lacking value or purpose, and Tayou finds them intriguing in both their bourgeois and proletarian functions. The artist emphasizes the ubiquitous presence of plastic bags in our daily lives, being handed to us almost every time we make a purchase. He is interested in the ordinary yet impactful feeling they create. In his own words, he seizes this moment of surprise and develops it as "plastic art." For him, the plastic bag is an object of transition and constantly moves towards new destinations; after the bag is emptied, its proletarian and pathetic state is revealed, but the artist transforms it into a work of art and presents it to the bourgeois world again with a new character and the cycle continues: “I’ve used plastic bags sometimes, both in performances and in installations, but in those cases I was interested in the visual effect. With this work, it’s become a subject of conversation, I’ve looked at it a bit more closely. It’s part of my environment, an object I could defend, propose, develop. By using it I’ve found another source of inspiration, another game. This work also expresses the fluidity inherent to plastic bags. A bag is a soft, flexible object, a perfect sportsperson: it leaps, swims, flies. It’s a “no-bags land”. […]*