Laetitia Ky, the artist who creates sculptures with hair, is on display in Tuscany

Casa Masaccio | Center for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with LIS10 Gallery Arezzo - Paris, presents a solo exhibition by Laetitia Ky entitled The Ambiguous Adventure, curated by Alessandro Romanini, dedicated to female empowerment in the art system and society. The Ivorian artist Laetitia Ky(Abidjan 1996) has been developing an absolutely original artistic activity for many years, which crosses the expressive dimension with that of civil and political commitment in the broadest sense, and from the technical point of view, she combines different artistic disciplines, from photography to painting, from sculpture to performance, from video making to cinema, in a synergic way. In particular, she has developed theoretical and technical research related to so-called “capillary sculptures,” in which hairstyling, a distinctive and identifying sign and nonverbal language on the African continent, becomes a tool for identity and gender claims.

Although her activity has led her to a frenetic international activity within a few years, as evidenced by her recent exhibition events, from the 2022 Venice Biennale, tagged Cecilia Alemani, in which she represented her country Côte d’Ivoire in the national pavilion, the Musée des Art Decoratifs in Paris, The Musée des Beaux Art in Caen, at the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg to name a few, and seminar engagements and workshops such as those held at the Tate Modern in London with curator Osei Bonsu, the Ted Conference held in Atlanta, Based in Istanbul, etc. .. not forgetting the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance as the female lead in the film Disco Boy, she has never forgotten her close relationship with Tuscany.

A relationship born many years ago, first through a passion passed on to her by her mother, (her younger sister is named Florence, in honor of the region’s capital city) and later with her studies and research related to the Renaissance and architecture, culminating in her technical and stylistic research that led her’led her to investigate sculpture in the territories of Carrara (where she carried out a photographic campaign related to quarries, history and craftsmanship), in Pietrasanta where she visited and worked with local foundries and workshops, and in Arezzo for her connection with Vasari and his Lives as well as Masaccio and his Madonna del Solletico in particular.

In 2022, she received the prestigious Silver Pegasus award from the hands of the President of the Regional Council of Tuscany, Antonio Mazzeo, on the occasion of the Tuscany Women’s Week, for her commitment to civil rights in general and women’s rights in particular, as part of her artistic activity.

For 2024, in view of this close relationship with the Tuscan territory and its history and coherence with her own poetic-identity research and broader political engagement, she conceived an exhibition for Casa Masaccio that translates into visual form a series of varied but interconnected reflections; The Ambiguous Adventure, inspired by Cheik Hamidou Kane ’s essay of the same name (1961); in this context, a reflection related to the Black identity nature, its social consequences and the duplicity connected to the dialectic between cultural roots and colonial ones intersect synergistically, to which is added a reflection connected to gender and discrimination still in place today, and last but not least a reflection on the genius loci of Tuscany.

This entire conceptual complex is coordinated by a reflection related to the gaze, vision and ultimately representation. For centuries, the vision ofAfrica and its inhabitants has been represented from a Eurocentric point of view, and both the artistic journey and the exhibition event in particular focus on experimentation, rewriting of new parameters of self-representation, in order to break free from an ethnoanthropological meaning that since the time of Hegel and the statements published in Philosophy of History (1821-1831) have been invalid in the West. The Ivorian artist from a very young age during her high school studies of history was struck by the early abolition in Tuscany of the death penalty and torture by then Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo in 1786. Similarly, she found inspiration in Tuscan female figures, among whom she points to Florentine Carla Lonzi (1931 - 1982), an activist, essayist, art critic and theorist of self-consciousness and feminism who was among the founders of the Rivolta Femminile editions in the early 1970s.

As is illustrated by the conceived exhibition, Laetitia Ky has long developed a work of analysis and reworking on the concept of the archive; a work that began with the discovery of a repository with photographs from the pre-colonial period in Côte d’Ivoire and the rest of the continent that depicted African women with their hairstyles. Hairstyles in most African countries represent a veritable nonverbal language, allowing the viewer to understand the woman’s ethnicity, social status, marital status, work performed, etc., etc. Starting from this iconographic deposit, the artist has developed a sense of pride of belonging and has structured a strategy aimed at the same time at the recovery and enhancement of identity roots and their proper evolution within a globalized context such as the current one. The Ivorian artist has developed a work related to “capillary sculpture,” where hairstyles, are shaped to construct specific messages based on non-verbal languages, accompanied by postures-often elements inferred from the syntax of body art and performance-with hints of the tradition of European portraiture.

Photography becomes a supporting element to the performance, and sculpture made from hair, uses metal elements to support the hairstyles (originally it was mud) to give rise to a real element of plastic processing. Through her works, the Ivorian artist simultaneously claims the pride of “black beauty” that has earned her a large audience linked to social networks (which in the context of her expressive strategy become a tribune and pulpit of dissemination and sharing) and a self-confidence for women, who in many African countries-and not only today-still struggle to obtain equal rights.

The exhibition consists of photographs of various formats, which are the result of as many hair sculpture performances, from some recent paintings and sculptures. The photographs, some of which were conceived especially for the occasion will focus in line with her expressive research on themes related to self-representation, the enhancement of “black beauty,” and the claiming of gender rights.

For all information, you can visit the official website of LIS10 Gallery.

Laetitia Ky, the artist who creates sculptures with hair, is on display in Tuscany

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.