Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia — Ontologie du mouvement projeté, 2022-2026

Making is a collaborative process for Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia. It involves other people, but also matter itself. “It’s not just me making the artwork,” he says. “The material also takes part in shaping it.” Created from reclaimed cardboard that is burnt, assembled and coated in white, Tectonique des Ombres (“Tectonics of Shadows”) covers the walls as a “recording device”, absorbing words, memories and touch. In another work, Kpédodoé provoqué (“Kpédodoé, Provoked”), gestures first learned through folding paper as a child are reworked in hand-formed clay suspended on copper wires. Elsewhere, floating forms recall skins and bodies, while the ceramic columns, Villosités, rise like markers in a landscape. Makouvia calls this a “stratification of cultures”, through which knowledge is transmitted by materials and the relationships they sustain. “The past is never truly past,” he says. “It continues to be lived.” Kokou

Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia’s practice, situated between sculpture and installation, emerges from an encounter between the artist and matter. Working with a range of media – including wood, rubber, paper and copper – he creates forms shaped by their resistances and relationships, as well as by the capacity of objects to tell stories, hold memories and energies, denounce and imagine new narratives. Drawing on his own experiences – his childhood in Togo, his travels, his encounters and Mina cultural traditions – his installations explore how the body enters into relation with matter through contact and transformation.