We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Romuald Hazoumè / Benin b.1962 / Liberte 2009 / Plastic, porcupine quills and fabric / Purchased 2009 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Romuald Hazoumè 2009/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016
Romuald HazouméLiberte 2009
Not Currently on Display
Ramould Hazoumè’s assemblages are constructed from a range of discarded materials, including the plastic containers used in the smuggling of petrol into Benin from Nigeria, a dangerous practice that has resulted in numerous accidents.
Hazoumè’s ‘recycling’ refers to the inequitable history of exchange between Africa and Europe, with slaves and cultural artefacts such as masks taken to Europe and the Americas. More recently, industrialised countries have paid African nations to allow the dumping of their waste. Hazoumè creates a subversive feedback loop within this system by recycling the waste as sculpture to be exhibited in (primarily) European galleries.
Raised in a Catholic family, Romuald Hazoumé has kept close contact with his Vordun culture, a traditional animistic religion practiced by many of the Yoruba people in West Africa. To create works that are at once humorous, playful and political, he draws on this mixed history and also the 20th-century European artistic avant-garde’s obsession with masks from Africa.