MADRID.- Sabrina Amrani announced the incorporation of Ishola Akpo to the gallerys roster of artists.
Ishola Akpo (b. 1983) is a photographer and multimedia artist in Benin. The artist experiments with the possibilities of digital mediums, while mixing modernities and traditions in his work, playing on different levels of reading to make plural metaphors. The border between reality and fiction, fixed identities and multiple identities, remains at the heart of his approach.
In 2013, he won the Visa pour la Création (French Institute, Paris), where he presented the series Pas de flash s'il vous plaît!, a reflection on the interaction of light on photographed subjects, presented in the form of a performance and exhibition at the Institut Français de Cotonou. In 2014, he published the series Lessentiel est invisible pour les yeux (Africa Is No Island, MACAAL, Fair 1.54 in Morocco, 2018), based on a family experience, which illustrates his grandmother's dowry, while insisting on its memory load. This reflection will lead him to explore contemporary marriage. In 2015, with the series Les mariés de notre époque, Ishola Akpo, won the Photoquai, entering the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
Since then, he participated in multiple artistic residencies: Montresso Foundation (Morocco) with the Daïbi series and more recently the Zinsou Foundation (Benin) with AGBARA Women presented at the Ouidah Museum as an ode to the power of women, embodied with portraits of known and forgotten queens from African history.
His work has been presented in several major international institutions and events including: The Museum of the History of Immigration, (Palais de la Porte Dorée, Africa 2020 - Paris), Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt (Germany), Fotonoviembre, Tenerife (Spain), Nuit Blanche de Port-au Prince (Haiti), Lagosphoto Festival (Nigeria), Festival Afreaka (Brazil), the exhibition ART DU BÉNIN DHIER ET DAUJOURDHUI: de la restitution à la révélation, at the Palais de la Marina (Bénin), and the Rencontres de Bamako 2022 (Mali).
Sabrina Amrani will present Ishola Akpo's work in the gallery in the first solo show by the artist in Spain, slated to open in November 2022.