The Musée d’Art Contemporain la Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA presents the opening and exhibition of the performance “Hòxó”, the result of the creative residency by artists Violaine Lochu and Marcel Gbeffa, which began in autumn 2021 and will take place respectively on June 29 and from June 30 to October 15, 2023. This collective work by the artists reveals an interweaving of two cultural and human realities, a twinship, a shared history and colonial past.
The opening of the exhibition, entitled “Hòxó #Ouidah-Bordeaux“, features a double video-performance filmed between two emblematic sites totally inscribed in the history of the slave trade, Ouidah in Benin and Bordeaux in France. Installed on the exhibition site, the video-performance represents a commemorative ritual in tribute to the victims of slavery and the slave trade. This immersive visualization by Violaine Lochu and Marcel Gbeffa invites the public to take part in this moment of recollection by creating steles filled with Atlantic water. They question the memory of the ocean, a vast expanse of water that served as an open-air tomb for all those enslaved men and women who perished without a grave.
The exhibition itself, “Hòxó“, which means twins in Fongbé, is a presentation that unveils a heterogeneous body of work. It leads us into a space of dialogue and imaginary resilience, bordered by a fictional twinhood. Through their artistic collaboration, Violaine Lochu and Marcel Gbeffa allow us to explore a harrowing shared history undulating between colonialism and slavery. Moving beyond physical differences, the artists investigate this poignant historical similarity, offering us a half-spoken account of an inclusive and complex narrative.
Marcel Gbeffa & Violaine Lochu correlate traditions, languages and bits of individual memory to create a polyphonic, subjective memorial space in perpetual construction. The “Hòxó” exhibition highlights the indivisible relationships that unite these entities, and represents a metaphorical overview of the geographical locations and humanities involved. It invites viewers to perceive the multiple potentialities of a shared imagination between Beninese cosmogony and Greco-Roman mythology.
