Jan. 9, 2010 - Apr. 4, 2010
Enigma #1, seed beads on digitally printed canvas, 2009
Enigma #2, seed beads on digitally printed canvas, 2009
Untitled, video installation, loop, 2009
Do Not Eat it Do Not Take it, This is Not My Body, photographs, 2009
Bidjocka moved to France with his family at the age of 12. He is widely exhibited and creates his work on the road, turning the debris of urban living and its excesses into art. He participated in the Venice Biennale where he was the author of the ongoing project L’écriture infinite. Throughout his career, Bidjocka embarked on an exploration of this infinite space, using all the means available to him: video, installation, painting, architecture and poetry, in his quest to find meaning, harmony and logic. This search has no other object than the quest itself, that is to say, knowledge.
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His work deals with issues of nationality, indeterminacy and identity, always subtly informed by religious practices and rites from his birthplace. Some objects and ideas are collected on the streets, paying tribute to the hypocritical veneer over our indebtedness to the personal services industry, while also investigating the underlying insidiousness of the language of that industry. His installation pieces serve as metaphors for loss, absence, ravishment and renewal. Quoting Okwui Enwezor, who selected Bidjocka to the Johannesburg Biennale in 1997: “They are reminders of the silence, the only left-over after the aggressive cleansing of the memories of migrants. On one side there are metaphors of loss and absence, filled with emptiness. On the other side there are traces of ecstasy and longing.”
Bili Bidjocka born 1962, Douala, Cameroon
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