Tethered to the spiritual realm, blue connotes a sense of serenity and healing in Yoruba culture. It’s also the color of peace, and for Romuald Hazoumè, it’s an apt metaphor for considering the legacy of colonial violence, climate catastrophe, and the global crises transforming life today.
In My Blue Period at October Gallery, the artist meditates on the contemporary geo-political landscape through a series of masks made from plastic jugs and found objects, like feathers, netting, and hardened paintbrushes. The expressive sculptures are part of Hazoumé’s series titled masques bidons, or fake masks, which utilizes the functional structures of the vessels—circular openings for mouths, handles for noses—to form abstracted figures.
The title of the exhibition references Pablo Picasso’s blue period, which emerged from his depression following the death of a friend, and preceded the Spanish artist’s African period in which he appropriated masking traditions from across the continent. Like Picasso, Hazoumé assembles found objects into minimal forms. “My intention is always to create works where no single element is ever overtaken by another,” he says. “For me, it’s crucial that you never lose sight of the container (bidon) yet still believe in the illusion. The bidon’s presence taunts you, making you conscious that it’s you projecting that ‘face’ you ‘see’ onto those plastic materials.”
Unlike the Spanish artist, though, Hazoumé isn’t concerned with his personal experience but rather ecological destruction, genocide, and armed conflicts threatening life on Earth. While earlier works in the series depicted men and large-scale issues of migration and collapse, the newer additions center on women and particular tragedies. From “the mother in Gaza killed by a sniper while seeking bread for her children” to “the grief-stricken Russian widow, who poisoned herself after both her sons died,” the stories referenced in sculpture are a way to bear witness. Hazoumé writes:
This work I do affects me deeply. I’m not making masks for other people, I’m making them for myself, trying to translate what I feel into something concrete, which stands apart from me, but reflects my innermost feelings. While making them, I gathered ordinary names from tragic tales reported in the news coming from all corners of the globe. The story is on an endless loop; women as ‘second rate beings’, continually abused and ground down by the cruelty of men.
While evoking the Hazoumé considers blue to be a counter to the “red lines” continually invoked in war and the crimson color of blood. “I imagined a balancing ‘blue line’ to stress the need to reduce global suffering and restore some hope of positive progress,” the artist says. “We need this blue middle ground to regain sympathy for each other, to help make life worth living again.”
My Blue Period runs through November 21 in London.
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