Galleries Curate: RHE: Mame-Diarra Niang & Barthélémy Toguo

Léthé, the new series by Mame-Diarra Niang, also consists of head-and-shoulders portraits, but that is where the similarities end. Her previous project, Call Me When You Get There, was a response to the artist’s desire to travel at a time when movements were severely restricted. Scanning the globe from her Paris home using her computer, Niang photographed its screen with her Fujifilm X-T2 camera. In this new series, she uses the same technical set-up but takes a different conceptual approach. 

The series takes its title from the Lethe river of Greek mythology. Also known as the river of forgetfulness, or oblivion, it was said to run through the underworld of Hades; the souls of the departed would drink its water to forget their earthly lives in order to be reincarnated.

FIGURE LE MOMENT QUI PRÉCÈDE, 2021

Inkjet pigment print on cotton paper

Niang writes:

'My work has always been about memory and forgetting. What makes a self? I have come to think of the self as a territory made of well-curated memories and erasures. The Léthé series places us where being itself is a forgotten monument; where even the most persistent conception of identity dissolves in front of us. We have to forget what we were in order to become anew … Naître et n’être rien.'

CE QUI N’EST PAS ENCORE LÀ ET CE QUI A DISPARU, 2021

Inkjet pigment print on cotton paper

100 x 100cm

Edition of 2 + 1AP

FAIT DE MÉMOIRE, 2021

Inkjet pigment print on cotton paper

70 x 70cm

Edition of 5 + 2AP

In Barthélémy Toguo's wood carvings, sculpted from the Zingana trees found throughout the country, Toguo pays homage to the sufferings and joys of the residents of the settlement of Bilongue, not far from his Cameroon studio.