“Barthélémy Toguo: Urban Requiem,” Galerie Lelong & Co. at The Armory Show

Lisbeth Thalberg
Barthélémy Toguo, Urban Requiem, 2015. Installation view: Barthélémy Toguo: Urban Requiem at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, 2022

For the Platform section of the 2023 edition of The Armory Show, curated by Eva Respini, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York is pleased to present Urban Requiem (2015), an installation by Barthélémy Toguo.

The installation is comprised of a series of ladders holding life-size portrait busts sculpted from Iroko wood. The floor beneath these structures is covered by images of boxes used to ship bananas, an element that recurs across a selection of Toguo’s installations. The busts function as stamps, with the recognizable calls to action of recent protest movements, from #MeToo to #BlackLivesMatter, carved into their bases. Oversized in comparison to a traditional stamp, these functional sculptures require significant effort to utilize, parodying administrative gestures.

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