Museum of Contemporary Art Set to Launch in Cotonou, Showcase Beninese Artists – World Issues
COTONOU, Benin, December 20 (IPS) – Construction of a new Museum of Contemporary Art is underway in Cotonou, Benin’s largest city. The museum, along with three others being built across the country, is part of the Benin government’s broader plan to consolidate the nation’s tourism industry and preserve its culture. It is expected to open by the end of 2026.
A traveling exhibition entitled “Revelation! Contemporary art from Benin” serves as a precursor to the new modern art museum. Originally, the exhibition was presented in Cotonou in 2022 under the name “Benin Art From Yesterday to Today: From the Restoration of the People to the Revelation.” Then it went to Morocco, Martinique, and now Paris.
The core of these efforts is to return 26 stolen art pieces to Benin from France by 2021. Restored royal artefacts were displayed alongside modern art at the first exhibition in Cotonou, and have remained in the nation’s homes ever since.
The exhibition features over 100 pieces of art by 42 artists from Benin and the Beninese diaspora.
Yassine Lassissi, director of visual arts at the Agency for the Development of the Arts and Culture (ADAC), said the exhibition includes the works of well-known, well-known Beninese artists and emerging artists.
The included pieces represent a range of different art forms and mediums, Lassissi said.
“There is definitely a diversity of techniques,” Lassissi said. “We have paintings, photographs, installations, multimedia techniques, drawings, and photographs.”
The artist Emo de Medeiros shows two works in the exhibition: a series of performances entitled Vodunaut and a short film called “Tigritude I.”
De Medeiros said “Tigritude I” was inspired by a quote from Nigerian activist and writer Wole Soyinka, who said, “A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it leaps.” De Medeiros explores the role of the African diaspora in combining technology and spirituality through the piece.
“It contains some of the past,” de Medeiros said. “An alternative dystopian futurism with the intervention of future tigers.”
When the exhibition returned to Cotonou from Paris this January, Lassissi said he hoped the painting could continue to travel to new places until the museum opens in 2026, including to the United States.
While in Cotonou, the exhibition attracted more than 220,000 visitors in just sixty days of opening.
“It was a truly historic event,” said Lassissi.
In addition to the Museum of Modern Art in Cotonou, Benin built the International Museum of Memory and Slaves in Ouidah, the Epic Museum of the Amazons and Kings of Dahomey in Abomey, and the International Museum of Arts and Civilizations of Vodun in Porto-Novo.
Most of the modern art pieces from the traveling exhibition will be kept at the Museum of Modern Art in Cotonou. 26 recovered royal artefacts will be displayed at a new museum in Abomey.
The government plans to place the Museum of Modern Art in a completely new area of the Culture and Arts neighborhood, which will also house the Franco-Beninese Institute, collaborative spaces, an Art Gallery, an artisan village, and artists’ residences.
The nation hopes that the museums will strengthen its cultural and entertainment industry, which it plans to become the second pillar of its economy after agriculture.
De Medeiros said he believed Cotonou had “lost a great deal” in the contemporary art museum.
“This was something that was needed,” said de Medeiros. “I think this should be a platform for Beninese artists to show their work to the world.”
Note: Megan Fahrney is a US Fulbright fellow. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States government.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
