Meschac Gaba

donated by the artist

Some recent solo exhibitions
Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel 2009, 'Meschac Gaba: Museum of Contemporary African Art & More'
Tate Modern, London 2005, 'Glue Me Peace'
Witte de With, Rotterdam 2001, 'Museum of Contemporary African Art – The Library'

Some recent group exhibitions
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 2005, 'Africa Remix. Contemporary Art of a Continent'
Biennale di Venezia, Venice 2003, Dutch Pavilion
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2000, 'For Real'

Selected publications
Nout Wellink, Eigenlijk Eigentijds, uit de kunstcollectie van de Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam: De Nederlandsche Bank 2007
Sophie Perryer, Meschac Gaba: tresses + other recent projects, Cape Town: Michael Stevenson 2007
Olav Velthuis, Imaginary economics. Contemporary artists and the world of big money, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers 2005

Selected public and corporate collections
Museum Het Domein, Sittard, NL • Museum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, NL • SMAK, Ghent, BE • Achmea Kunstcollectie, NL • Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, NL • Rabo Kunstcollectie, NL

In 1986 Gaba started his art career in the studio of the self-taught artist Zossou Gratien in Benin, after which he worked as an independent artist for ten years in the city of Cotonou. In 1996 he came to the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. During the Open Atelier Days of the Rijksakademie in 1997 he presented the Draft Room, the first room that initiated a project that he developed that year, called the 'Museum of Contemporary African Art' (MOCAA). Now his museum consists of 12 rooms, in the form of a series of installations, dealing with the relationship between art, money, power and politics. Other than in regular museums where visitors can only look, not touch, almost everything at the mocaa can be touched and even used. Gaba invites visitors to his museum as active participants. His rooms often feature money: shredded banknotes from Benin, Holland and Switzerland. For Gaba, money represents the skewed economic and cultural relations between the West and Africa in the world economy.

Meschac Gaba was resident artist at the Rijksakademie in 1996-1997.
He won the Will-Grohmann-Preis (DE) in 2002.

www.museumofcontemporaryafricanart.com