Pascale Marthine Tayou, Colored Stones (detail) 2018. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, exhibition view Hedges, Edges, Dirt - ICA / VCU, Richmond, USA, 2018. copyright ADAGP, Paris. Photo by David Hunter Hale for ICA / VCU.

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in Cameroon in 1966 and lives and works in Ghent, Belgium, and Yaounde, Cameroon.

  • The numbers of the works of art correspond to the numbers on the exhibition route in the visitor's guide.
  • You can also find these works of art in the virtual tour.

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in Cameroon in 1966 and lives and works in Ghent, Belgium, and Yaounde, Cameroon. At the beginning of his career, the artist feminized his first and middle name into “Pascale Marthine” with the intention of undermining the importance given to authorship and gender in the art world. Tayou works with a multiplicity of media and topics. Whether in the form of sculptures, installations, videos, drawings, or objects, his practice centers around the hybridization of cultures, the individual journey in the globalized world, and the place and perception of his African identity in it. Tayou’s work has been presented in solo and group shows all around the world, including at the Mu.ZEE (2019), Bozar (2015), Kassel documenta 11 (2002), Venice Biennale (2005, 2009), Turin (2008), London Tate Modern (2009), Gwangju Biennale (1997 and 1999), Santa Fe (1997), Sydney (1997), and Havana (1997, 2006).

 

Le Chemin du Bonheur (2012)

Number 1 on the exhibition route
Location: art park

The exhibition starts (and ends) on an optimistic note: there is a way to a happier future. With his typical bright colours, Tayou draws an alternative path on which we can stroll together. He paints a picture of a life with ‘the eternal sun under our footsteps every day’. For Tayou, the museum can be a place where we meet, where we exchange ideas and where we learn from each other. Le Chemin du Bonheur traces the possibility of another path within the Middelheim Museum and beyond, aspiring to map reconciliation for the future, transcending the colonial sediments lying underground.

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Le Chemin du Bonheur (2012) © Copyright The Artist/De kunstenaar , Photo: Léonard Pongo, Courtesy Galleria Continua

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Le Chemin du Bonheur (2012) © Copyright The Artist/De kunstenaar, Photo: Léonard Pongo, Courtesy Galleria Continua

 

La Paix des Braves (2019 / 2021)

Number 18 on the exhibition route
Location: art park

Stones symbolize protest and revolution. Throwing stones has been part of uprisings throughout history: the 1830 French barricades, May 68, and the Palestinian Intifada, for example. Arranged in a pile, here the stones appear as if in a post-destruction moment, after the dismantling of an unjust order and of our cities’ fraught foundations. To this image of protest, Tayou joins symbols of peace: a white flag planted on top of the colourful pyramidal mound. The installation combines the necessity of reparation and at long last, the aspiration for reconciliation.

Pascale Marthine Tayou, La Paix des Braves (2019 / 2021) © Copyright The Artist/De kunstenaar , Photo: Léonard Pongo, Courtesy Galleria Continua

Pascale Marthine Tayou, La Paix des Braves (2019 / 2021) © Copyright The Artist/De kunstenaar, Photo: Léonard Pongo, Courtesy Galleria Continua

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Pascale Marthine Tayou, Colored Stones (detail) 2018. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, exhibition view Hedges, Edges, Dirt - ICA / VCU, Richmond, USA, 2018. copyright ADAGP, Paris. Photo by David Hunter Hale for ICA / VCU.

Congoville. Contemporary artists tracing colonial tracks

29 May until 3 October 2021 An exhibition about the traces of the (post)colonial history of the Middelheim site. Several African and international artists will take the visitor on a walk.