Georges Adéagbo

Georges Adéagbo (1942, Cotonou, Benin) produces site-specific installations, in which he creates a relationship between his own personal history and the cultural and political history and current events of the place where he is working. In preparation for his installation for Global Imaginations, Adéagbo visited Leiden – and De Meelfabriek and Museum De Lakenhal in particular – for inspiration. At Museum De Lakenhal, Lucas van Leyden’s *The Last Judgement* made a particular impression.

Adéagbo’s room-size installation in De Meelfabriek consists of texts, reproductions of works in Museum De Lakenhal’s collection made by Adéagbo and local craftsmen, and objects such as books, paintings and textiles bought at flea markets or found on the streets of Leiden and Cotonou. Textiles are a recurring feature of Adéagbo’s work, symbolising the fusion of local and global through the vast distances they travel to markets far away from their point of production. In Leiden, this aspect of Adéagbo’s work gains an additional significance: textiles played a key role in Leiden’s industrial heritage, from where – centuries ago – they were shipped to the Benin in West Africa.

An additional installation produced by Adéagbo for Global Imaginations was on display in Museum De Lakenhal.

Global Imaginations was Adéagbo’s first exhibition in the Netherlands.

Georges Adéagbo lives and works in Cotonou, Benin and Hamburg, Germany. His installations are made in collaboration with Stephan Köhler