M HKA Ensembles

Installation

Collection: Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin.

Matti Braun’s installation explores the complex figure of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the poet who was Senegal’s first elected president after decolonisation from 1960 to 1980. Two sets of 10 prints, titled Pierre Pierre and Pierre respectively, bring together different references, from Senghor to Surrealism, to Arno Breker and his proposal for a monument for African liberation in Dakar, to a mask motif from the poster for the first Festival des Arts Nègres in Dakar in 1966, and another with an image of a sculpture exhibited at the festival. Others are more elliptical – coloured light reflecting on a marble floor, or a sandy beach. We are left to make sense of this web of associations the artists collected during his research into the life of Senghor and the Négritude cultural movement that he was one of the main proponents of. The installation also includes a set of abstract paintings made with paint on raw silk. The colours have been allowed to run and mingle freely, alluding to the development and transformation of personalities, whilst taking influence from other thinkers or outside forces.