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Lot Essay
Born in Nigeria in 1962, Samuel Fosso fled the Biafran War to Cameroon and eventually to the Central African Republic where he established a photographic studio at the age of thirteen. Initially, the young Fosso used leftover film from shoots with clients to shoot himself in extravagant poses wearing flamboyant 1970s fashions, which he would then send back to his family in Nigeria.
Fosso first gained international recognition in 1993, when his work was discovered by the French curator and critic Bernard Deschamps while organising an exhibition of African photography. Since that moment, Fosso’s self-portraiture has evolved to explore a large range of different roles. These include Black heroes and icons from the Independence and civil rights movements, and extend to Fosso experimenting with different notions of beauty and gender roles. ‘When I work,’ he states, ‘it’s always a performance that I choose to undertake. I link my body to this figure, because I want to translate its history'.
Fosso’s Patrice Lumumba, taken from his African Spirits series, sees Fosso inhabit the body and spirit of Lumumba, embracing his persona and reviving the energies of the visionary Congolese leader. It draws an interesting parallel to Igbo masquerade, in which the performer invokes the spirit of his ancestors.
The title The Chief: The One Who Sold Africa To The Colonists invites us to consider another dimension of the work, in which we question the position of the sitter in the orders of power. The work plays with the idea of agency and shifting power relations, and also with the role of photography in articulating these hierarchies. The now iconic image was used as the cover of Simon Njami's landmark exhibition Africa Remix, 2004.
Samuel Fosso was awarded the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands in 2001. His work is held in numerous prestigious collections such as the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate, London; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. He is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the MEP in Paris with a forthcoming exhibition at the Menil Collection, Houston.
Fosso first gained international recognition in 1993, when his work was discovered by the French curator and critic Bernard Deschamps while organising an exhibition of African photography. Since that moment, Fosso’s self-portraiture has evolved to explore a large range of different roles. These include Black heroes and icons from the Independence and civil rights movements, and extend to Fosso experimenting with different notions of beauty and gender roles. ‘When I work,’ he states, ‘it’s always a performance that I choose to undertake. I link my body to this figure, because I want to translate its history'.
Fosso’s Patrice Lumumba, taken from his African Spirits series, sees Fosso inhabit the body and spirit of Lumumba, embracing his persona and reviving the energies of the visionary Congolese leader. It draws an interesting parallel to Igbo masquerade, in which the performer invokes the spirit of his ancestors.
The title The Chief: The One Who Sold Africa To The Colonists invites us to consider another dimension of the work, in which we question the position of the sitter in the orders of power. The work plays with the idea of agency and shifting power relations, and also with the role of photography in articulating these hierarchies. The now iconic image was used as the cover of Simon Njami's landmark exhibition Africa Remix, 2004.
Samuel Fosso was awarded the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands in 2001. His work is held in numerous prestigious collections such as the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate, London; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. He is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the MEP in Paris with a forthcoming exhibition at the Menil Collection, Houston.