Barthélémy Toguo: The Beauty of Our Voice: Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York

For his first solo exhibition in an American museum, The Beauty of Our Voice, Toguo is expanding his gaze to the U.S. with new watercolor paintings, installations, photography, performance, and a community art project.

Barthélémy Toguo’s multi-disciplinary work addresses migration, colonialism, race, and the relationship between the global north and south. For his first solo exhibition in an American museum, The Beauty of Our Voice, Toguo is expanding his gaze to the U.S. with new watercolor paintings, installations, photography, performance, and a community art project. He created some of the works during a residency in June at The Watermill Center in a unique new collaboration between the Parrish and Watermill who invited him as their 2018 Inga Maren Otto Fellow. The exhibition is organized by Corinne Erni, Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects.

Road to Exile

The centerpiece of The Beauty of Our Voice is Road to Exile—a monumental installation that addresses the migrant and refugee crisis, specifically, the desire of young Africans to escape in hopes of a better life. Road to Exile is a life-size boat that Toguo built at Watermill, heavily laden with bags made from African fabrics and placed on the precarious surface of glass bottles, evoking the danger of a journey that not all survive. Installed in one of the largest galleries at the Parrish, Road to Exile will be surrounded by drawings, etchings, and paintings from the Parrish collection that depict boats in various settings and eras. The juxtaposition of Toguo’s Road to Exile with these works, which largely celebrate sea travel, exploration, and commerce, reveals the stark contrasts and ambiguous history of seafaring. Toguo initiated Road to Exile for the National Museum of Immigration in Paris in 2008 and has since created multiple versions for institutions worldwide.

Mobile Cafeteria

Toguo is transforming an entire gallery at the Museum for Mobile Cafeteria, a participatory installation inspired by African street cafés. At once playful and educational, Mobile Cafeteria is a space for visitors to reflect on the economic, social, and cultural relationships between the global north and south, as well as its imbalances and possible transformations. Visitors are invited to play African board games and watch recorded African soccer games while learning about Bandjoun Station, a center for culture and agriculture founded by the artist in his native Cameroon that reflects the artist’s commitment to self-determination by Africans to set their own prices for agricultural products and artworks.

Mobile Cafeteria also serves as a gallery for Toguo’s artwork that explores the socio-political issues in Africa and America as well as their historical correlation. Three nearly life-size staged photographs from his 2005/2008 series Stupid African President, featuring the artist posing as African politicians, will be on view: Speech, Afrika Oil?, and Forest Destruction.

Toguo’s new series of pencil drawings on canvas, Black Lives Matter,depicts African Americans killed recently in the United States by members of police forces. Two wooden guns suspended by metal chains are aimed at portraits of Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Tyre King, Trayvon Martin, Keith Scott, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, and Christian Taylor.

The exhibition also features large-scale and several smaller paintings that Toguo created at Watermill. Painted predominantly in olive green watercolor ink, the paintings depict human-like forms morphing into animal shapes or abstract creatures, erasing the separation between humans and nature.

Head Above Water—Hamptons

Toguo engaged nearly 100 Hamptons residents for his ongoing, worldwide community art project Head Above Water, created to provide an international platform for everyday people by bringing their voices into museum spaces. Since 2004, the artist has asked people living in challenging socio-political situations to write something about their lives, dreams, and hopes on a postcard addressed to him. For Head Above Water—Hamptons, Parrish and Watermill educators met with young adults from area schools and the Shinnecock Indian Nation who were asked to answer the question, “Where do I fit in, in American society?” Toguo provided postcards printed with his original artwork of a horse head, an iconic image that evokes Native Americans and freedom, as well as wealth and imperialism. The 96 framed postcards will be on view in the Museum’s spine gallery, alongside Head Above Water—Lagos (2005) and Head Above Water—Mexico (2008).