Pascale Marthine Tayou (b. 1967, Nkongsamba, Cameroon) is an internationally renowned artist known for his multidisciplinary approach, embracing sculpture, installation, drawing and video. His works explore themes of migration, identity, globalisation and sustainability, interweaving references to African culture with the contemporary global context.
Tayou participated in Art to Art VIHe developed a site-specific work for the city of San Gimignano, in which he combined his poetics with the local cultural and architectural heritage. In addition, he donated one of his works to support the realisation of the Neophyte Parka reforestation project financed through fundraising Art for Reforestationdemonstrating its commitment to environmental issues.
With an artistic practice deeply rooted in sustainability and the connection between cultures, Pascale Marthine Tayou continues to be a key figure on the international art scene.
Born in Nkongsamba, Cameroon, in 1966, Pascale Marthine Tayou lives and works between Ghent, Belgium, and Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Since the early 1990s, and thanks to his participation in Documenta 11 (2002) in Kassel and the Venice Biennale (2005 and 2009), Tayou has become known to a wide international audience. His work is characterised by its variability, as it is neither limited to a single medium nor to a specific set of themes. Although his themes are manifold, the starting point always remains the artist himself as an individual. Already at the beginning of her career, Pascale Marthine Tayou added an 'e' to her name to give it a feminine ending, thus ironically distancing herself from the traditional emphasis on artistic authorship and male/female gender attributions.
This approach also extends to the rejection of any reduction to a specific geographical or cultural origin. His works do not merely bridge cultures or relate man and nature in ambivalent ways, but acknowledge that they are social, cultural or political constructions. His work is deliberately mobile, elusive to predefined patterns and heterogeneous. It is closely linked to the idea of travel and contact with what is other than oneself, and is so spontaneous as to seem almost random. Tayou's objects, sculptures, installations, drawings and videos have a recurring characteristic: they reflect on the individual moving through the world, exploring the issues of the global village. In this context, Tayou addresses the issue of his African origins and the expectations associated with them.