Meschac Gaba (1961)
When Meschac Gaba moved from Benin to Amsterdam in 1996 for a residency at the Rijksakademie, his oeuvre took an unexpected turn. He discovered that museums and galleries only exhibited contemporary art from Europe. Gaba consequently reached the conclusion that, if he wanted to create African art without following the traditions of his native country, he would have to present his work in an individual context.
Gaba has been presenting two sides of the art coin through his work ever since. He has always had a keen eye for traditions as well as new concepts, for both theory and practice and for Africa and the West. He has also consistently insisted on creating his own context by always presenting a virtual museum for contemporary African art within the walls of physical museums. Gaba furthermore enjoys working with ‘worthless’ materials such as dried beans and banknotes. Gaba once ran across a large container filled with shredded paper money in Benin and since then he has been drawing attention to the distorted world economy that also influences the mechanisms in the art world.
