Serious, provocative and satirical, Barthélémy Toguo’s artistic practice inextricably links criticism and aesthetics. An ambitious multidisciplinary artist, Toguo examines through his installations “the regulated flows of people, goods and resources between the developing world and the West.” Addressing migration, colonialism, race, exile, and displacement, Toguo’s art shows first and foremost that “men or women are always potential exiles, driven by the urge to travel, which makes them ‘displaced beings.’”
His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Venice Biennale, and the Palais de Tokyo, and is in collections such as Jean Pigozzi’s Contemporary African Art Collection, the Tate Modern, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. More recently, Toguo exhibited at the Louvre as part of the exhibition Les choses, une histoire de la nature morte, as well as at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona for a solo show.
Toguo studied at l’ École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, l’ École Supérieure d’Arts in Grenoble, France, and the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Germany.
