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| Pascale Marthine Tayou . Born in Yaoundé in 1967.Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium
and in Yaoundé, Cameroon. |
SOURCES –
ABOUT THE ARTIST -
The
drawings, installations, sculptures, videos and performances by the Cameroonian
artist Pascale Marthine Tayou question the structure of cultural and national
identities, the significance of borders in an era of extreme globalisation, and
the interaction between personal and collective histories. When the Red Door
opened at the S.M.A.K. in 1996, its visitors entered through an installation by
Tayou, an incredible pile of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, fishing nets,
bricks, tin cans, snippets of paper and all kinds of junk. Thus, with
considerable irony, Tayou brought the chaotic life of Africa’s slums into the
museum.
On
16 August 2009 the Jamaican Usain Bolt took the world record for the 10-metre
sprint to an unreal 9.58 seconds. In 2012 Pascale Marthine Tayou has laid out a
single-lane athletics track in the heart of the Tondelier district. Until the
1960s, this part of Ghent had been full of working industries. Although most of
the factories have since been demolished or put to new use, one can even now
still read the history of this neighbourhood in its eroded urban skin. Pascale
Marthine Tayou’s Le défi is a red gravel track that comes to a dead end at a
wall. It is clear how the work is to be read and used, but the consequences are
ambiguous. Le défi will not be recognised as an artwork by most of the local
residents. It is a playful but meditative reflection on the significance of
sport, the acceptance of a challenge and the generation of social change and
emancipation. In this way, Pascale Marthine Tayou has created ‘an image’ of
both the global, Olympic heroism of a world record and the minor hitches facing
every individual.
PASCALE
MARTHINE TAYOU’S PENCILS AT ‘REVERSE CITY’ (AN ART SHOW IN JAPAN)
Rows of giant pencils hanging from thick beams appear in
Matsudai Joyama. On each pencil is written the name of one of the countries of
the world. The giant pencils are variously colored; some are short, some are
tall. This town of pencils is fixed into a stainless steel frame and hovers,
detached from Nature, at a height of about two meters. Suspended upside-down,
the points of this colorful city are aimed at human visitors who, looking up at
it, feel both awed and threatened.
