Meschac Gaba

Détresse

2017

Car light sculpture

Dimensions variable

Born 1961 in Cotonou, Benin; lives there

Since the late 1990s, Gaba has investigated constructs of cultural identity. Flags and banknotes form a recurrent and important component of Gaba’s visual language, and are used to reference globalisation, capitalism, ecology, migration, religion and power.

Inspired by his experiences of living in the Netherlands and Benin, his work playfully engages with relationships between Africa and the West, local and global, art and everyday life.  Curator and critic Simon Njami has described Gaba’s artistic production as a continuum, an oeuvre in continual development, in which the creations communicate with one another.