Samuel Fosso: Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mönchsberg
The Generali Foundation at Museum der Moderne Salzburg organizes Samuel Fosso's first personal exhibition in Austria.
From the mid-1970s onwards, Fosso has given a new twist to West Africa's long-standing traditions of studio photography by developing and successively refining an individual form of explicitly theatrical self-portraiture. These self-portraits are based on a play with roles, identities, and media images and on the embodiment of selected, heterogeneous characters that are of both personal and political significance.
With his works, Fosso reveals social encodings of the body, clothing, accessories, posture, and facial expressions in a virtuoso manner and playfully traverses attributions of gender, ethnicity, and social class. A core topic of several groups of his works is to be found in the multilayered relationships of Africa to the East and the West since the mid-twentieth century, which have been marked by postcolonialism and globalization. This exhibition highlights these political aspects of his work, among others.
Curator: Jürgen Tabor
Installation views: © Museum der Moderne Salzburg, photographer Rainer Iglar
Exhibition events on the Museum der Moderne Website