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Valise Diplomatique (Tibet), 2017 by Meschac Gaba

Courtesy the artist & Galerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc, Grand Paris

Meschac Gaba

Valise Diplomatique (Tibet), 2017

wood, glass, flag

9 × 57 × 75 cm | 3 1/2 × 22 1/2 × 29 1/2 in.
Certificate provided by the gallery

In Situ - fabienne leclerc

Romainville

€17,000

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About this artwork

“Diplomatiques” (2008) consists of a series of suitcases that represent the political and economic alliances between the countries whose flags they contain: we see the flag of China with that of America, Israel with Saudi Arabia, Russia with Syria, Germany with France, South Africa with Holland and England… The suitcases, which we also find in the series “Diamants indigènes” (2008), constitute recurring units with a plastic language developed around the idea of globalization, just like the migrant’s bundles (“Voyage Colis,” 2013) or those of the nomads hung on wood batons (“Voyage,” 2012). Their arrival in the gallery’s spaces also involves a stroll of extras miming diplomats parading in the Stalingrad neighborhood in Paris. This intervention mode in the city has driven Gaba since the creation of the MAVA5 (Musée de la vie active) that had given rise to “parades” of his wig-sculptures in Paris (FIAC 2013) as well as in Benin (2010) as far as the use of spectacular media forms as was the case for the motorcycle taxi parade organized for the “Bibliothèque Roulante” performance in Cotonou in 2011. These strolling forms produce singular communication spaces that, for the artist, aim at having a local impact on the public space and its actors: “I want to make people active, as you saw in Benin during the 2011 Biennale, I like to bring art to the people who are on the street and take it out of the gallery, because I also want to bring my work to a public that lives on the street and that does not necessarily visit exhibition spaces. I hope that this can encourage questions on our contemporary world (…) when I am in the public space I talk to everyone and especially to this public that does not enter galleries, to this public that thinks more about surviving than about art.”

Text by Francesca Cozzolino

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