Pascale Marthine Tayou - Home Sweet Home (2010)

Pascale Marthine Tayou has created a new piece for the exhibition, entitled Home Sweet Home. The work is made up bird houses tied together, and sits on wooden columns like a fisherman’s home. On the ground the artist has placed a large group of readymade statues from West African, depicting black figures in the dress of ‘modern’ types such as lawyers and businessman. These statues colons (‘coloniser statues’) go back to the early C20th, when the most common figure was a white colonial agent in pith helmet. The installation is a sound piece in disguise, as the birdcages give out the calls of a variety of local and exotic birds – which the artist describes as the sounds of freedom.

(e-flux)