SAMUEL FOSSO
Samuel Fosso has become a leading figure on the contemporary art scene, and has frequently been invited to show his work internationally in such renowned institutions such as Tate Modern in London, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His work is also represented in prestigious international private and public collections. But despite this widespread recognition, he has not recently been the subject of a major retrospective, and never in France. The exhibition Samuel Fosso will reveal for the first time the breadth and richness of his prolific body of work, which has been exploring the potential of the photographic medium for nearly fifty years, and which continues to offer a refreshing and extremely relevant vision of the world today.
A master of performance in front of the camera
Although Samuel Fosso is part of a long African tradition of studio photography, of which Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta are the most eminent practitioners, he has also made a major contribution to reinventing this photographic genre by turning the camera on himself and transforming his photo studio into a kind of playground a space of absolute freedom, a place for infinite possibilities in the performance of identity. Going beyond the practice of classical self-portraiture, Samuel Fosso embodies multiple characters, as a film actor might, in order to call into question both codes of representation, and the basis upon which we make judgements consciously or otherwise. His unique body of work brings photography fully into the realm of performance art, positioning him alongside such major international artists as Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura.
Samuel Fosso utilizes the body, clothing, accessories and poses as essential tools for deconstructing representations of stereotypes, in particular those related to gender identity, race and social class, and for showing multiple individualities that bypass overly simplistic categorizations. His works also explore the symbolic power of images to create icons and collective myths. His photographs bear witness to this in his very first selfportraits, produced in the 1970s, and later with the iconic series “Tati” as well as various collaborations with the world of fashion, in particular with Vogue magazine.
A body of work reflecting a post-colonial world
Samuel Fosso's work also has an undeniable and powerful political dimension. Reflecting a history marked by post-colonialism and globalisation, the series on display tell a story about relationships the African continent has maintained with the East and West since the mid-20th century - relationships of influence and domination, but also of interdependence and resistance. In his series “African Spirits”, “Emperor of Africa”, “Black Pope” and “ALLONZENFANS” for example, Fosso makes reference to different geographical and cultural contexts, highlighting their limits and contradictions and reflecting the legacy of a long history of populations affected by notions of diaspora, cultural imperialism and neo-colonialism.
A body of work marked by a turbulent past
A photographer's work is never disconnected from his personal life and in Fosso’s case his projects are extremely personal, even autobiographical, such as the series "Le rêve de mon grand-père" and "Mémoire d'un ami". More generally, Samuel Fosso's self-portraiture might also be related to the fact that there are no existing photos of him when he was very young; his parents did not document his childhood since he was born with a physical handicap; as a result, photographing himself became a way of asserting his existence.
Samuel Fosso’s work is also inseparable from the context in which he grew up, the context of postindependence in Central Africa and can be seen as a metaphor for the repeated exiles he would undergo throughout his life, in Cameroon, Nigeria, the Central African Republic and France. He was the only child in his family to survive the Biafran War in the late 1960s. In 2014, due to the civil war that was ravaging the country, he was forced to flee the
Central African Republic. His house and studio were attacked by looters, and his archives burned. A few thousand negatives, however, were miraculously rescued and some of these images are presented for the first time, revealing the genesis of his photographic practice.
Samuel Fosso’s work can be described as an artistic work of resilience and resistance; this can also be seen in the recent series entitled "SIXSIXSIX", a monumental installation of 666 large-format Polaroids that is both a political and philosophical statement. The series paints a picture of a complex understanding of humanity, in both the best and the worst senses of the term, and whose condition is one of acceptance of both joy and suffering.