"Equilibrium Wind" (2020–2022)
"Untitled" (2020), "Workers – Untitled IV" (2022), "Workers – Untitled V" (2022), "Workers – Untitled IX" (2022), "Workers – Untitled XI" (2022)
Mixed media
"Equilibrium Wind" is part of the ongoing project that artist Thierry Oussou has been developing over the last few years. It focuses on the cotton plantations in the Panouignan district of Benin and the significant impact they have on the country’s economic growth at the same time foregrounding the artist's own cotton-growing plantation that, similarly to other small farms across the country, supports local workers and their communities.
Cotton is an important African product in the globalised arena. It is the subject of international discourses and debates on privatisation, poverty reduction, agricultural subsidies, and sustainable development. But unlike gold or oil, cotton is grown through the labour and sweat of millions of small-scale farmers on whom households and entire communities depend. In raising attention to the workers and global circulation of cotton, he imagines a different production and distribution cycle.
Through paintings and works on paper, the artist pays tribute to the farmers and other people whose work is often not seen in our society. Oussou reconnects the dots of cotton production by pointing out the sequence of actions that we as consumers often forget.
Thierry Oussou is born in 1988 in Allada, Benin. As a visual and conceptual artist, his practice incorporates a diversity of media.
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art