Le Rocker – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition dates: 22nd October, 2022 – 10th April, 2023

Curator: Jürgen Tabor

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Archives from Studio Photo National, Samuel Fosso’s studio in Bangui
Nd
© Samuel Fosso  courtesy Jean-Marc Patras / Paris

Another exhibition on this wonderful artist with additional photographs… one of four large exhibitions that have take place recently in Europe and America. The other three being:

Samuel Fosso: The Man with a Thousand Faces at the Walther Collection, Germany, May – November 2022
Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts at the Princeton University Art Museum, November 2022 – January 2023
Samuel Fosso: African Spirits at the Menil Collection, Houston, August 2022 – January 2023

A well deserved flavour of the year!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing at left, photographs from the Archives from Studio Photo National
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Archives from Studio Photo National, Samuel Fosso’s studio in Bangui
Nd
© Samuel Fosso  courtesy Jean-Marc Patras / Paris

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series 70’s Lifestyle
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
70’s Lifestyle
1974-1978
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Introduction

Samuel Fosso (Kumba, CM, 1962 – Bangui, CF; Paris, FR) is one of the most renowned African photographers working today. He has been a key innovator in the great tradition of African studio photography since the mid-1970s, developing and successively refining a distinctive form of explicitly theatrical self-portraiture. Fosso’s self-portraits blend photography with performance and intertwine autobiographical themes and conceptions of the self with political and historical perspectives. The works articulate the complexity and diversity of contemporary identities and explore the relations between Africa and the East and West in the era of post-colonialism and globalisation.

Organised by the Generali Foundation at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the retrospective presents a selection from Samuel Fosso’s most important bodies of work. It is the first major exhibition of Fosso’s art in Austria and one of his first solo shows in the German-speaking countries.

Featuring elaborate makeup and lavish costumes, props, and sets, Fosso’s autofictional self-portraits are not so much self-dramatisations as self-transformations. He slips into roles and borrows identities – from pivotal figures in history as well as social archetypes, many of them with deep roots in the globally networked visual memory. Embodying these icons and representations, he interrogates their impact on media, society, and politics, casting himself as a surrogate and catalyst. Fosso’s self-portraits are highly artificial scenic productions on the stage of the photography studio, where he is photographer, performer, and director in one. With analytical acumen and acting skills, he deftly exposes and undercuts social codes around bodies, attire, poses, facial expressions, and gazes and collective assignments of identity based on gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic and social background.

After a brief apprenticeship, Fosso opened his own studio for portrait photography in 1975, when he was thirteen. His business success rested on his flair for fashion and aesthetics and his talent for encouraging his clients to show off their personal style. Having spent his workday taking portraits of paying customers, he switched to the other side of the camera in the evening: taking inspiration from West African and African-American music, youth culture, and political rebellion, he donned tight shirts, extravagant bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and offbeat props to stage himself in unconventional and unconstrained poses. The result was Fosso’s early series of experimental black-and-white self-portraits now known under the title 70’s Lifestyle (1975-1978).

For many years, he shared his self-portraits only with private audiences. At the initiative of the French photographer Bernard Descamps, they made their public debut in 1994 at the inaugural Bamako Encounters – African Biennial of Photography. The self-portraits added an important aspect to the tradition of West African studio photography, which garnered considerable attention in the 1990s. In 70’s Lifestyle, Fosso limns an alternative vision of masculinity by playfully subverting conventions concerning the depiction of bodies, gender, and sexuality. Sustained by a newfound self-confidence, Fosso’s self-portraits reflect a search for fresh conceptions of identity after the early period of postcolonial transformation in the 1960s; they are also a gesture of emancipation from the suffering he experienced as a refugee in Nigeria and under the repressive Bokassa regime in the Central African Republic. Artistic aspects such as theatricality and the appropriation of media imagery that Fosso develops in 70’s Lifestyle become constants in his work.

In 1997, Tati, a French department-store chain, commissioned Fosso to conceive a new body of works. Fosso developed a series of self-portraits in bold colours, some of which became iconic. Hewing to his characteristic style of elaborate and meticulously thought-through masquerade, disguises, and sceneries, now laced with an unmistakable penchant for satire, the Tati series shows him alternating between a number of controversial identities. For instance, he impersonates archetypes of African as well as Western societies like the tribal chieftain, the golfer, and the “liberated” African-American woman. The series’ centrepiece, Le Chef (qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons) (The Chief [Who Sold Africa to the Colonists]), is both a tribute to African tribal leaders and a critique of the temptations of power in the age of European colonialism.

In later series such as African Spirits (2008) and Emperor of Africa (2003), Fosso’s work takes on a more pronounced political edge. In African Spirits, he embodies historic protagonists of the pan-African independence and civil rights movement including Angela Davis, Patrice Lumumba, Haile Selassie, Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali. The large-format self-portraits reenact historic pictures from magazines and newspapers. The satirical-critical element of Tati gives way to a thoroughly serious process of identification: bringing his protagonists to life, Fosso not merely draws a connection between their legacy and his own experience, he seems to positively fuse with them in the strikingly convincing impersonations. The portraits in African Spirits pay homage to the campaigners for civil rights and colonial independence while also suggesting their extraordinary gift for self-dramatisation and media savvy, which helped them frame and disseminate their political ideals.

In the series Emperor of Africa, Fosso grapples with the complexities of the power differential between China and Africa by casting himself in the role of the controversial Chinese revolutionary and Communist Party leader Mao Zedong. In his reenactments, Fosso portrays Mao not only as a liberator, but also as a symbol of a modern imperialism. African leaders initially welcomed China’s growing economic and cultural presence, but the exercise of the power that came with this presence has increasingly prompted concerns. “As a performer, Fosso is both subject and questioner, the man behind the mask, interrogating the imperial and the postcolonial in equal measure.” (Olu Oguibe)

Born in Cameroon, Samuel Fosso spent the first part of his childhood in Nigeria. After the Biafran War, he moved to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. Having completed a brief apprenticeship, the teenaged Fosso opened his own studio for portrait photography in Bangui in 1975, a business he ran until 2014. That year, his home was ransacked during an armed conflict in the Central African Republic, and the photographic archive of his commercial studio was destroyed; some of the material was later reconstructed. The artist lives and works in Bangui, Central African Republic, and Paris, France.

Text from the Museum der Moderne Salzburg

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series Tati
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
La femme américaine libérée des années 70 (The Liberated American Woman of the 1970s)
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
The Chief (who sold Africa to the Colonists)
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, Generali Foundation Collection – Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
The Golfer
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series Tati
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Le Rocker (The Rocker)
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Le Pirat (The Pirate)
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Le sauveteur (The Lifeguard)
1997
From the series Tati
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing at left, photographs from the series Fosso Fashion, 1999; in the centre, photographs from the Archives from Studio Photo National; and at right, photographs from the series Tati 1997

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Self-portrait
1999
From the series Fosso Fashion, 1999
© Samuel Fosso courtesy Jean-Marc Patras / Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Mémoire d’un ami (Memory of a friend)
2000
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Mémoire d’un ami
2000
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Le rêve de mon grand-père (My grandfather’s dream)
2003
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Installation views of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series African Spirits
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
African Spirits (Nelson Mandela)
2008
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
African Spirits (Angela Davis)
2008
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
African Spirits (Malcolm X)
2008
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
African Spirits (Muhammad Ali)
2008
Gelatin silver print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series Emperor of Africa
Photo: Rainer Iglar

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
Emperor of Africa
2013
From the series Emperor of Africa
Chromogenic print
© Samuel Fosso, courtesy of Jean Marc Patras, Paris

Installation view of the exhibition Samuel Fosso at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg showing photographs from the series Black Pope
Photo: Rainer Iglar