SAO PAULO.- BRAZILISM is the first solo show by renowned Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou in São Paulo - and his second exhibition with A Gentil Carioca, in collaboration with Galleria Continua. With new works, the show delves into the artist's multifaceted practice, creating a vibrant dialog between cultures and contexts. It also marks the artist's return to the city since his participation in the 25th São Paulo Biennial in 2002.


Explore the Opulent Art of Pascale Marthine Tayou: Delve into his installations and themes in this book.


Born in 1966 in Nkongsamba, Cameroon, Tayou lives and works between Ghent, Belgium, and Yaoundé, Cameroon. Renowned for his innovative and dynamic approach, his work builds bridges between civilizations and explores the ambiguous intersections between man and nature. His practice, marked by fluidity between different media, reflects on mobility, cultural exchanges and the complexities of identity. This exhibition continues her research into her African roots and the dynamics of the globalized world.

With a career marked by participation in major international events such as Documenta, the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennale and the Turin Triennale, Tayou has also held solo exhibitions at renowned institutions including the Serpentine Gallery (London, 2015), Bozar (Brussels, 2015) and the Musée de l'Homme (Paris, 2015).

“Brazil is the perfect illustration of the “whole world”.
A country that is the sum total of human passions,
an exhibition to leaf through the pages of a global dream.
BRAZILISM is an invitation to take a walk here and elsewhere,
a stroll through a field of flowers strewn with soft thorns.”

(Pascale Marthine Tayou)

Born in Nkongsamba, Cameroon in 1966.

Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium and in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Ever since the beginning of the 1990’s and his participation in Documenta 11 (2002) in Kassel and at the Venice Biennale (2005 and 2009) Pascale Marthine Tayou has been known to a broad international public. His work is characterized by its variability, since he confines himself in his artistic work neither to one medium nor to a particular set of issues. While his themes may be various, they all use the artist himself as a person as their point of departure. Already at the very outset of his career, Pascale Marthine Tayou added an “e” to his first and middle name to give them a feminine ending, thus distancing himself ironically from the importance of artistic authorship and male/female ascriptions.

This holds for any reduction to a specific geographical or cultural origin as well. His works not only mediate in this sense between cultures, or set man and nature in ambivalent relations to each other, but are produced in the knowledge that they are social, cultural, or political constructions. His work is deliberately mobile, elusive of pre-established schema, heterogeneous. It is always closely linked to the idea of travel and of coming into contact with what is other to self, and is so spontaneous that it almost seems casual. The objects, sculptures, installations, drawings and videos produced by Tayou have a recurrent feature in common: they dwell upon an individual moving through the world and exploring the issue of the global village. And it is in this context that Tayou negotiates his African origins and related expectations.



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