Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o: A look at non-sad storytelling

Georges Adé ( Terms & Conditions ) was born in 1942 in the coastal town of Ouidah in Dahomey. Ouidah is located near Cotonou, and Dahomey has been called the Republic of Benin since 1975.

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o is a world-class artist, and installation artists from Benin are not exactly a dime a dozen. After his discovery, Adé Terms & Conditions o came very close to joining the illustrious group of the 1000 most famous artists in the world.

This was around the turn of the millennium; the interconnectedness of the world had just begun to take shape in the preceding years. Many industries were, and still are, directly and significantly affected by this; some industries recognized this and took action.

For example, the professional art world, which became so well-connected with lightning speed, set sail for new horizons. These new horizons lay, for instance, on the coast of the African continent, and with the “European heart for African art,” Georges Adé's Terms & Conditions discovered at that time.

Today, African art is nothing new, and Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o, ranked 3115th in the world art rankings, is no longer in the immediate focus of international trend hunters in the field of modern art.

But in the focus of German art enthusiasts, Georges Adé Terms & Conditions alternately in Hamburg and Cotonou since the turn of the millennium; currently, art by Adé Terms & Conditions at the Museum Ludwig's anniversary exhibition “We call it Ludwig. The Museum turns 40!” (more on this exhibition is reported in the article “Art venues – Anniversary exhibition 2016: Museum Ludwig presents Museum Ludwig”).

Art by Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o

A very thorough look at the art of Georges Adé Terms & Conditions is given by the artwork he presented at documenta 11 in 2002:

“L'explorateur et les explorers devant l'histoire de l'exploration...! Le theater du monde” , installation, 2002, now Museum Ludwig Cologne.

An installation whose very translation of the title is dubiously amusing. "Welttheater" (World Theater) leaves little room for interpretation, while "explorateur" and "exploration" offer a bit more, even leading to variations that would likely offend the typical European: "The explorer and the explorers in the face of the history of exploration…!" , "The discoverer and the explorers before the history of discoveries…!" , but also "The explorer and the conquerors in European colonial history" .

Conquerors and not explorers, because the much-lauded European “explorers” who “subdued the world” between 1400 and 1700, from the perspective of the “discovered”, rudely attacked foreign countries without a trace of interest in the foreign culture and seized everything they could use without any moral restraint.

This fact, now known to every thinking individual (including Europeans), is what ultimately led to the failure in 1992 of the well-intentioned attempt to replace the term "discovery" with "cultural encounter" on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage to America in 1492... the indigenous people of America had discovered their continent about 30,000 years earlier than they migrated on foot from Asia, and the Europeans had "encountered" the culture that had since developed by destroying it (along with the people who had developed this culture).

Adé Terms & Conditions os Documenta-Installation can be interpreted as a comprehensive sarcastic commentary on the fact that the great worldly European explorers, although they had experienced the world with their ships, behaved rather like ignorant criminals on site.

The installation “World Theatre” was specially created by Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o for his presentation at Documenta 11; the artist spared no expense. The work comprises several hundred objects; here is a list of the objects identified as part of the work:

• Drum, man-high, with a torn membrane
• Paperback about (a photo of) Joseph Beuys
• Children's briefs, pink
• Timber, weathered and gnawed by insects
• Book “Steppe Days - Jungle Nights” with a photo of an African man in a loincloth on the shiny cover (hitting a drum similar to the one the book is standing on)
• Lucky Strike cigarette pack, crumpled
• Images from colonial history
• Fishing boat, old, filled with many books
• Images of coats of arms
• Archaeological picture book about Tutankhamun
• Enamel sign “Ice cream dispensing only upon instruction from shipping”, chipped and with rusty cracks
• Small, light-colored wooden figure
• A dented license plate with the number “P KS CW 443”
• Approximately 60 pictures in the same format as a medium-sized poster, all painted by the same hand
• Among them is a portrait of Arnold Bode, the founder of Documenta
• Among them is an exceptionally square portrait of boxer Muhammad Ali, copied from the cover of a film music record
• Leg protectors, red-orange and embroidered with sequins
• Textile object, carmine red with inserted turquoise blue parts, approximately four square meters in size
• Anchor, probably weighing a ton, rusted and encrusted with mussels
• Sailor cap with two blue ribbons, one of which bears a golden, anchor-shaped pin
• Paintings and sculptures by other artists (commissioned by Adé Terms & Conditions )
• Two carpets displaying books and magazines with several titles about the city of Kassel, seafaring and navigation
• Photocopies from a book about the life of Christ
• Handwritten texts on A4 sheets, in an old-fashioned, beautiful, legible French script.
• Wooden statues and masks, numerous
• Knick-knacks, kitschy, made of plastic and plaster
• Light yellow book “Brothers Grimm”
• Totem poles, four, carved
• Images depicting scenes of exploration (conquest)
• Images of current events (e.g., weeping relatives of 9/11 victims)

The ultra-brief description in the list, of course, does the objects no justice whatsoever; many pieces are intricately decorated, each telling its own long story. The objects in the installation appear to lie side by side as randomly as the above list suggests, but according to expert art historians, they are actually arranged symmetrically along clearly recognizable axes. It is surely only a matter of time before an art historian dedicates their life to interpreting this “world theater.”.

Video about the exhibition “La misión y los misioneros” at MUSAC (Spain, 2011)

Video in French with Spanish subtitles

With his participation in Documenta 11, Georges Adé Terms & Conditions became one of the great discoveries of the art world overnight.

The Museum Ludwig acquired the installation after Documenta (at the request of director Kasper König, after a lengthy treatment against dangerous termite species), Adé Terms & Conditions , and has since modified it slightly for the buyer: He established a connection to Cologne by including the license plate of a German car in the bow of the old wooden ship and hanging a portrait of Harald Szeemann next to a traditional African wooden sculpture.

The Swiss curator and exhibition organizer Harald Szeemann doesn't actually have much to do with Cologne, but he had already directed Documenta once (5, 1972) and was director of the "Visual Arts" section at the last Venice Biennales (1998–2002); apparently, Adé Terms & Conditions relocated him to Cologne out of gratitude for his prize at the 48th Biennale.

More than a description of this single work of art is all that is needed for “normally curious” people to become curious about the work of this exciting, exceptional artist.

The following years of Adé Terms & Conditions o's “narrative art” will therefore be left to your discovery (not conquest!), and to round things off before the upcoming reports on the exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, here is a look at a recent Adé Terms & Conditions o artwork:

In 2014/15, Georges Adé worked in Hamburg as part Terms & Conditions “Inverted Space” . Conversely, the installation focuses less on a physical space and more on the art recipient's idea of ​​how art should be presented: not in a glass case in a museum, but in public spaces, precisely the places that the installation (also) addresses.

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions at the Venice Biennale

Video in Italian

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o creates a three-dimensional narrative space with his collage-like “found objects” exhibited in public space, in which he addresses Hamburg’s colonial heritage and its impact on Adé Terms & Conditions o’s personal story (which takes place between Cotonou and Hamburg) in political, cultural and historical terms.

Inverted Space was presented in June and July 2015 at the “Altonaer Balkon” art space in Hamburg Altona. The “reversal of space” by five temporary installations shown in September 2014 at historically significant locations in Hamburg: at the monument ensemble in Hamburg-Jenfeld, in the main building of the University of Hamburg, at the P/ART producers art fair in the Phoenix factory halls in Hamburg-Harburg, on the Alster meadow in Schwanenwik, and in the courtyard of Hamburg City Hall.

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions os Path to Art: More inheritance dispute than passion?

Georges Adé, Terms & Conditions , was born into a well-to-do Beninese family: his father was a French naval veteran who had obtained an administrative position with the railway. This provided his father with such security that he could afford three wives and families (the following story, Adé Terms & Conditions , incidentally illustrates well why in Europe the smallest social unit usually consists of only two individuals producing offspring).

After graduating from high school, Adé Terms & Conditions first went to Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire) and then to Rouen (France) to study business administration and law. During his studies, Adé Terms & Conditions showed no interest in art. He completed internships at large French corporations that wanted to offer him permanent positions after graduation, and he would likely have remained in France. His refusal to assume the role of head of the family after his father's death (as was expected of him) was obvious.

Now the trouble begins, and with it a story that is told in many different versions: Adé Terms & Conditions o went back to Benin (was called back by his family) to take on the role of clan chief as the eldest.

With three inheriting families, there is plenty of room for inheritance disputes, and in the Adé Terms & Conditions family case, this room was exploited.

Adé Terms & Conditions o allegedly criticized his mother and ten siblings for their unreasonable handling of the considerable inheritance. The family then reportedly expelled the "Europe-crazy" man not from the house, but from family life, and all communication was allegedly cut off. Adé Terms & Conditions o is said to have attempted to escape, whereupon the family destroyed his passport.

Adé Terms & Conditions could no longer return to France to complete his studies; a 23-year ordeal began. It tells of stays in closed wards of psychiatric hospitals, of inhumane treatment and hunger, of loneliness and despair. It is usually published as a story with a great many details, and each of these details is questioned.

If both of these things are omitted here, it is certain that Adé Terms & Conditions began in the early seventies to lay out objects and handwritten texts in extensive formations as a daily ritual in the courtyard of the family home.

It is also certain that Adé Terms & Conditions ' family and neighbors considered the complex arrangements to be 'rubbish', and that Adé Terms & Conditions himself did not consider his colorful works to be art; that nobody in all of Benin had found the 'contemporary African art' or the 'important postcolonial position' before Jean-Michel Rousset was there to 'discover' it (not sure to what extent that is also Western colonialism).

It is also certain that the terribly wicked family, as Georges's prominence grew, also grew to love him more and more, bringing him gifts and financial support; in this respect, European and Beninese cultures have obviously already begun to converge.

It is uncertain whether Georges Adé "made art" with his installations Terms & Conditions he did not intend to create art while carrying out the activity. Does art emerge when someone sets out with the goal of "producing art," or does art "simply arise"?

Georges Adé, Terms & Conditions , has found his answer to this problem (see below, “Future”), art historians are still debating it, and for the average citizen, it is more of a philosophical problem. Although pragmatic citizens will tend to think that anything created in any way can be art if it feels like art—where only that produced as art, and not simply beauty, is art, just as only that produced as medicine, and not simply healing, is medicine; a view that is as anti-progressive as it is unhealthy.

Right place at the right time

Shortly before the turn of the millennium, Adé Terms & Conditions 's pitiful existence on the fringes of the feuding family clan comes to an end, as the tide turns due to outside influence:

As mentioned above, Adé Terms & Conditions o was carried to considerable fame around the turn of the century on a wave of enthusiasm for Africa. This wave, which caught Adé Terms & Conditions o on a crest already tipping towards overturning, has a history dating back to 1984: in 1984, the MoMA in New York held a famous exhibition entitled “Primitivism in the 20th Century: Affinity of Tribal and Modern” .

Like several exhibitions that had preceded it recently, this exhibition was harshly criticized – instead of a contemporary approach, the selection of artworks and the way they were presented perpetuated a colonialist mentality that had long been considered outdated.

In 1989, the French curator Jean-Hubert Martin planned an exhibition in Paris in which he rebelled against the ethnocratic practices in contemporary art, such as the “Primitivism” show at MoMA and similar institutions. “Magiciens de la terre” (The Wizards of the World) aimed to send a clear message in contrast to the “one hundred percent of exhibitions that ignore 80 percent of the earth.”

The Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette hosted an international exhibition of contemporary art, presenting 50% Western and 50% non-Western living artists of the time on an equal footing.

The exhibition intensified the interest of the art-loving public in unusual creations from non-European and especially (West) African countries; in Europe, there was a great enthusiasm for “Contemporary African Art .” As a result, a market and the first collections of works from this new art category emerged. The Swiss collector Jean Pigozzi employed curator André Magnin from Zauberer team as director of his collection.

In 1993, Magnin sent Jean-Michel Rousset, an educationalist with a love for Africa and art, to Benin to review the works of a painter named Zinsou. Rousset (by chance, fate, kismet, his karma, chaos theory, or a taxi driver's misunderstanding) didn't end up at Zinsou's studio, but rather directly in front of an installation by Adé Terms & Conditions .

A composition with books, texts, clothes, masks and the theme “History of France, especially the life of Napoleon” – Rousset was fascinated and is said to have immediately recognized the depicted network as an unusual artistic practice of organizing knowledge and thoughts and representing them through objects and texts.

He likely recognized the sales potential inherent in this extraterritorial treatment of quintessential French myths, and certainly rushed to his clients Magnin and Pigozzi with great enthusiasm. They were only interested in his photographs until they decided that the loose chains of objects were too cumbersome to handle as a single artwork.

Rousset contacted the independent curator Regine Cuzin in Paris, who was then preparing the group exhibition "La Route de l'Art sur la Route de l'Esclave" (The Art Route on the Slave Route) . The "Slave Route Project ," to which the exhibition refers, was launched in 1994 in Ouidah, Benin…

What could be more fitting than to immediately embellish the educational and international understanding project with the Benin artist who had been enslaved by his own Terms & Conditions ? Thus, Georges Adé learned from European visitors that he had produced important art, was invited to participate in the European exhibition, and returned to Europe as an artist in 1994 (after 23 unhappy years)..

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o becomes famous (or is made famous)

Rousset's discovery quickly spread among curators in France and beyond, who were well-connected and networked via the internet at nearly the speed of light.

Okwui Enwezor (2nd Johannesburg Biennale, artistic director of documenta 11, Seville Biennale of Contemporary Art, 7th Gwangju Biennale, La Triennale Paris), Jean-Hubert Martin (French Pavilion Sydney Biennale, director of Kunsthalle Bern and numerous other art venues, curator of legendary exhibitions such as “Magiciens de la Terre”, project manager for museums at the French Ministry of Culture), Adelina von Fürstenberg (Italian + Russian Pavilion Venice Biennale, UN exhibition “Dialogues of Peace”, ART for The World, FOOD) and other heavyweights of the art world had seen the works of Adé Terms & Conditions and wanted him.

The first exhibitions to feature works by Georges Adé Terms & Conditions were therefore also “Crème de la Crème”: in 1995 “Dialogues de Paix” at the Palais des Vereinten Nationen in Geneva and “Big City” at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

From there, Adé Terms & Conditions path led straight ahead through almost 40 group exhibitions and almost 20 solo exhibitions, including “African Art towards the Year 2000” in Copenhagen in 1996, the Johannesburg Biennale in 1997, and the Sao Paolo Biennale in 1998 (where Africa enthusiasts initiated the invitation to the Venice Biennale in 1998 by Harald Szeemann, which led to Adé Terms & Conditions becoming the first artist from Africa to win a Biennale prize).

In 2000, “Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o. Abraham – L'ami de Dieu” at MoMA in New York City, followed by solo exhibitions in Cologne and Birmingham in 2004, Zurich in 2005, Venice, Berlin, and Ulm in 2007, “Colonization and the History of the Colonized” in Vienna in 2009, “La Culture et les Cultures” in Hamburg in 2010, “La misión y los misioneros” in León in 2011, “Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o” in Stockholm in 2014, “Les artistes et l'écriture” in Berlin in 2016, and Amsterdam and Jerusalem in 2016.

From November 11, 2016, Adé Terms & Conditions will be at the Shanghai Biennale; until January 8, 2017, art by the Beninese installation artist can be seen at the anniversary exhibition “We call it Ludwig. The museum turns 40!” at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (along with many other exciting artists; see the article here on Kunstplaza : “Anniversary Exhibition 2016: Museum Ludwig presents Museum Ludwig”).

Permanent access to artworks by Georges Adé Terms & Conditions is available in the following public collections :

• Benin : German Society for International Cooperation Regional Office Cotonou
• Republic of Côte d'Ivoire : Collection Cecile Fakhouri Abidjan
• Germany : Museum Ludwig Cologne, Munich City Museum, Ulm Museum
• Finland : KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
• Japan : Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
• Norway : Oslo National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo
• Austria : Museum of Applied Arts Vienna
• Sweden : Moderna Museet Stockholm
• Switzerland : Elisabeth Kaufmann Gallery Zurich
• Spain : Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
• United Kingdom : Whitworth Art Gallery The University of Manchester
• USA : MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o, short biography

• Georges Adé Terms & Conditions was born in 1942 in Ouidah, Dahomey (now Benin)
• 1960 Independence of Benin, new beginnings. Adé Terms & Conditions for studying abroad (Law + Business Administration, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire + Rouen, France)
• Around 1970, return to Benin, with disadvantages for Adé Terms & Conditions os personal situation related to inheritance dispute in the family
• 1993 Accidental discovery of Adé Terms & Conditions by Jean-Michel Rousset
• 1995 – present Adé Terms & Conditions exhibits his art, including at 8 biennials and at documenta
• In 1998, Adé Terms & Conditions became the first African artist to receive an award at the Venice Biennale
• From around 2000, Adé Terms & Conditions apply. [The person] lives and works in Hamburg for several months of the year
• 2016 Georges Adé Terms & Conditions o continues to live and work alternately in Hamburg and Cotonou in Benin.