The Life Cycle of Art Works

In this class you will intimately explore and discuss the nature of an artwork from its inception to its exhibition and beyond. Pascale Marthine Tayou addresses the essence of an artwork from its initial inspiration and conceptualisation, to its production, installation and ultimately to its dispersal.

In the second part of the class, he focuses on the conditions under which artworks are exhibited. Illustrating the discussion with a selection of works spanning his own career, Tayou aims to foster an open and lively debate with fellow participants around the phases of an artwork's creation and its subsequent incarnations in the world.

Approximate duration: 3 hours

This class is conducted in French with English translation.

Pascale Marthine Tayou (b.1967, Yaoundé, Cameroon)
Based in Belgium and working all over the world, Pascale Marthine Tayou is a nomad both in life and art. Multifarious, ungovernable, surprising and provocative, his work is always linked to the idea of travel.

Explaining that his use of found materials is more about history than recycling, Tayou appropriates things that he finds on his journeys - plastic bags, train tickets, fast-food wrappers and other flotsam from the mess and mania of global consumerism - which he then diverts, 'instilling a soul into it'.

He considers his sculptures, films, photography and installations to be 'collective' works in that they are a reflection and agglomeration of everything that happens to him in his daily life. Stating that, for him, art is simply a means of communication, Tayou insists, 'I want the public to enter into my world.'