Pascale Marthine Tayou

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Poupée Pascale #07 2014. Tate. © courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana.

11 rooms in Materials and Objects

The found and discarded materials in this display skilfully combine the spiritual with the everyday

Pascale Marthine Tayou’s work explores mobility, economics and the environment. He lives and works in Ghent, Belgium but mostly works with objects found in his home country of Cameroon. Using repurposed objects is central to Tayou’s practice. He says that ‘choosing an object allows me to give it a new lease of life – like the dead leaves we walk over, for instance. I re-use them in a precise context.’

A moped hangs at the centre of the sculptural installation Bend Skin Contrevents. Woven baskets as well as calabashes (dried gourds) almost conceal it from view. Calabashes are traditionally used in West Africa as musical instruments, food containers and ritual objects. Known in Cameroon as ‘bend skins’, mopeds help transport large quantities of baskets, plastic bottles and other products. These heavy loads threaten to almost bend the mopeds that support them. A horsehair tail hangs from the rear of the sculpture, in reference to alternative modes of transport.

The hand-blown crystal Poupées Pascales (Pascale’s dolls) are inspired by wooden African sculptures. Tayou has embellished them with materials such as chocolate, feathers, medicinal herbs, bottles and stockings. These refer to Cameroonian rituals as well as colonial histories of trade and economic exchange. Tayou combines historical craft techniques with traditional African art forms in a playful and personal way. Tayou explains that ‘the world is my inspiration; it is so large and full of objects which through their diversity help me bring about solutions to my existential questions.

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Pascale Marthine Tayou, Bend Skin Contrevents 2014

Bend Skin Contrevents 2014 is a hanging sculptural installation weighing approximately 150–200 kilograms. At the centre of the sculpture is a moped to which woven bamboo and raffia baskets, as well as calabashes or dried gourds, have been attached. Beneath these, the back wheel and handlebars of the suspended moped are barely visible. The sculpture is completed with a horsehair tail that hangs down from the rear, without no part of the work touching the ground. Bend Skin Contrevents is one of a series of four hanging sculptures made in 2014 for Word Share, Tayou’s solo exhibition at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Each one has a suspended moped at its centre, onto which a range of found objects – feathers, raffia, seeds, basketry and drums, for example – has been carefully attached. The titles of the other three are Bend Skin Chasse Mouche, Bend Skin Calebasse and Bend Skin Rideau Raphia.

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