Wax Rasta 2009

Hazoumè's assemblages (such as Wax Rasta, Nest Violeta and Liberte) are constructed from a range of discarded materials, including plastic containers used in the dangerous smuggling of petrol into Benin from neighbouring Nigeria. Hazoumè's 'recycling' refers to historical inequities in exchange between Africa and Europe — of slaves and traditional artefacts brought to Europe and the Americas over centuries. It also highlights the contemporary phenomenon of industrialised countries paying African nations to allow dumping of their waste. Hazoumè creates a subversive feedback loop within this system by recycling the waste as sculpture to be exhibited in (primarily) European galleries. The mask, beloved of the twentieth-century European avant-gardes, is a recurring form in the assemblages, which point to the interlinking of art history and colonial collecting.