Georges Adéagbo’s summation of nine months spent in Berlin as a DAAD artist in residence has resulted in a startling and energized installation that overturns the role of the cultural anthropologist. The Benin-based artist frequented Berlin’s flea markets and thrift shops throughout his stay, so the gallery is full of strange bedfellows, from Edith Piaf LPs to Buffy the Vampire Slayer VHS tapes, from romance novels to Bavarian knickknacks. Yet Adéagbo also fastidiously clipped headlines and gathered the city’s ephemera, such that his display is as much a condensed visual document of a year lived in Berlin as a global citizen, as an African in Europe, and as a successful contemporary artist. It is at once a self-portrait and a portrait of our times. France’s presidential race between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy is a major refrain, abutting references to the crisis in Darfur and announcement cards and posters related to the major Grand Tour art exhibitions this summer, including at least three mentions of the first-ever (if controversial) African pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Several African sculptures and objects form focal points throughout, while the artist’s writings, quotations, and commissioned paintings are deployed more frequently but have a more understated role. Despite being jam-packed with all manner of visual information, the installation is far from aggressive or even chaotic. Purposely responding to the seventeenth-century Wunderkammer, Adéagbo here plays the role of collector, and as such the presentation feels measured, the choice and placement of individual objects undertaken with great care and awareness.
