Exhibition
Pascale Marthine Tayou
Look at yourself in the mirror

On view November 9, 2023–May 30, 2024
FIAF Gallery



FIAF’s new exhibition presents the work of Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou. Through sculpture and multi-media works, Look at yourself in the mirror reflects Tayou’s unique perspective. Drawing on his nomadic origins, the artist proposes a “global village” of images in his work. Tayou combines unconventional materials with ancestral objects. Neon, wood, chalk, and paint are among the materials offered throughout FIAF’s Gallery and lobby. By reimagining popular visual culture, Tayou addresses the complexities of individual and national identity.

FIAF will feature Tayou at its Trophée des Arts Gala 2023, presenting six of his Poupée sculptures at the Plaza Hotel on November 15. The sculptures will then be added to this exhibition at the FIAF Gallery.

The exhibition’s opening reception on Thursday, November 9, from 6–8pm, will be accompanied by an artist talk with Tayou in the FIAF Skyroom from 6-6:45pm. The conversation and Q&A will be moderated by Claude Grunitzky.

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Contemporary artist Pascale Martine Tayou (Cameroon, b. 1966) works and lives between Ghent, Belgium and Yaoundé, Cameroon.

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    • Tayou’s career began in the 1990s as he assumed the double name Pascal(e) Martin(e). The addition of feminine endings was a deliberate choice to distance himself from artistic authorship and male/female ascriptions, as well as from specific geographical or cultural origin.

      Tayou’s work is not confined to any one medium or set of issues or themes. It mediates between cultures, setting man and nature in ambivalent relations to each other, and is produced in the knowledge that they are social, cultural, and/or political constructions. The work is deliberately mobile, elusive of pre-established schema or heterogeneity, and closely linked to the idea of travel and of coming into contact with what is other to self.

      The objects, sculptures, drawings and videos produced by Tayou have a common feature: they dwell upon an individual moving through the world and exploring the issue of the global village. It is within this context that the artist negotiates his African origins and related expectations.

Claude Grunitzky

Claude Grunitzky is the CEO and Managing Partner of Equity Alliance, a new fund dedicated to providing capital to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in America who are women or people of color.

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    • Claude is also the founder of two media companies, TRACE, funded by Goldman Sachs, and TRUE Africa, funded by Google. Claude, a curator for FIAF’s 2021 edition of “Crossing the Line” festival, was raised between Lomé, Togo; Paris; London and New York. Growing up, Claude, who speaks six languages and carries three passports, was exposed to many different cultures. These foreign interactions shaped his transcultural philosophy and informed the creative energy of his ventures. A graduate of London University and MIT, where he earned an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Claude is also a trustee at MASS MoCA, and a longtime trustee at Humanity in Action.