Winner of Visa pour la création (French Institute, Paris) in 2013, Ishola Akpo presents the series Pas
no flash please!, a reflection on the interaction of light with the subjects photographed,
presented in the form of performance and exhibition at the French Institute of Cotonou.
In 2014 and 2015, he explored the habits and customs relating to marriage. With The essential is invisible for
eyes, he looks at the dowry through the personal experience of his grandmother. These
photographs are exhibited, in 2018, in the group exhibitions Africa Is No Island (Musée
of Contemporary African Art – Al-Maaden), Gray is the new pink (Weltkulturen Museum – Frankfurt)
or even What is forgotten and what remains (Palais de la Porte Dorée – Paris, 2021).
In 2022, he extends the experiments of this series through the installation Erou Kekere,
composed of enamelled metal plates and terracotta sculptures. between memory
personal and collective, this body of work reveals, questions and safeguards this custom, this
legacy. These new pieces will be exhibited at the Sabrina Amrani Gallery (Madrid).
These reflections on the dowry had prompted him, from 2015, to take an interest in the imprint of this practice.
ancestral in contemporary marriage through the work The bride and groom of our time. Winner
of Photoquai, Ishola Akpo thus enters the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
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After two creation and research residencies, in 2017, at Le Center (Benin) and at the Fondation
Montresso (Morocco), Ishola Akpo revives his practice of self-portraiture by creating the Daïbi series.
In this photographic work, he elaborates an imaginary God, thought in relation to his
Nago origins, and questions the singularity of its own identity.
In 2020, he presented Agbara Women at the Contemporary Art Museum of the Zinsou Foundation in
Ouidah following several months of residency. This project sheds light on the ambiguous relationships
and complexes between women, power and history through the prism of little known, forgotten and/or
or evicted from the collective memory. Between embroideries (Manifestos), photographic portraits
fictional works (Agbara Women) and collages (Traces of a Queen), Ishola Akpo rehabilitates
symbolically the legacy of these powerful women. Thus, he gives substance to new
imaginaries in connection with the debates of our contemporary societies. This series is, among others,
presented in collective exhibitions: Cosmogonies - Zinsou, an African Collection (MO.CO
Hôtel des collections – Montpellier, 2021), Talking Mirrors (M. Bassy – Hamburg, 2021), Art of Benin
yesterday and today: From restitution to revelation (Palais de la Marina – Cotonou, 2022) and
will also be at the African Photography Meetings (Bamako, 2022).