The Toyota Municipal Museum has become the first institution in Japan to invite Georges Adeagbo, an award-winning West African artist, to create a site-specific installation, which is open to the public now until Sept. 2.
Born in 1942 in Cotonou, Benin, Adeagbo developed his aesthetic grammar far from the art world. He never met artists nor visited exhibitions while studying law and business administration in France in the late 1960s. Upon his return to Cotonou, he refused to accept the traditional role as family head after his father's death, a decision for which he was ostracized. When his family turned a deaf ear to his philosophical insights, Adeagbo started leaving constellations of found objects and written texts in their courtyard as his only remaining means of self-expression.
For over 23 years he lived unrecognized. Then, in 1994, he was "discovered" as an artist. Influenced neither by art school nor the fine arts environment, Adeagbo's language evolved naturally and his installations contributed fresh blood to the contemporary art clan, which had begun to experience the adverse effects of cultural incest.