Tiwani Contemporary Lagos opens their 2024 programme with artist Délio Jasse’s solo exhibition Caducado. This exhibition will run from 2 February to 20 April 2024.
Image courtesy of Délio Jasse. Image courtesy of Délio Jasse.
Italy-based Angolan artist Délio Jasse often interweaves found images with clues from past lives (found passport photos, family albums) to draw links between photography – in particular the concept of the ‘latent image’ – and memory. Besides creating his own printing techniques, Jasse is known for his experiments with analogue photographic printing processes including cyanotype, platinum, and early printing methods like “Van Dyke Brown.” He subverts the reproducibility of the photographic medium with analogue processes creating subtle variants and interventions using painting, liquid-light, gold-leafing and collage.
His exhibition at Tiwani Contemporary, Caducado features eight photographic installation series executed between 2014 and 2023 that affirms Jasse’ commitment to early analogue photographic processes, techniques and printing that prefigures the materiality and formation of the photographic print as an object that evokes questions around the provenance of images, the dynamics of the gaze and observation, shifting architectural and civic histories, and subjecthood.
Image courtesy of Délio Jasse.
The exhibition title, Caducado derives from the Portuguese expression and also serves as the name of his latest series of 2023 cyanotype works, Caducado and Series Registo. The artist reclaimed expired or discarded ephemera, such as documents, passports, personal effects, and ‘archives,’ from flea markets, giving rise to this series. Délio Jasse’s particular focus is on early to mid-20th century group portraits that likely belonged to private individuals, adding a unique perspective to the narratives embedded in these forgotten artifacts.
Jasse enters a process of re-imagining the images; his interventions recast figures anew, proposing new questions that are inimitably officiated by his use of a stamp motif or amended with cursive writing layered onto the pictorial surface, re-establishing a new image and encounter with these visual documents. Es Se Mais Mundo Houvera (2021) and Sem Valor (2019) share similar stylistic approaches on textile and Fabriano paper.
Included in the survey are earlier series Terreno Ocupado (2014), Series Urban landscape (2017), Multi Business (2018) and Cidade em movimento (2016) which collectively are fleeting portrayals of the populous, metropolitan, port city of Luanda, Angola; capturing everyday life, economic precarity and prosperity and the tenacity of its citizens held in amongst the urban sprawl of post-colonial, and new commercial architectures.
Image courtesy of Délio Jasse.
Artist Biography
Délio Jasse’s recent solo and group exhibitions include: A World in Common, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2023 (group); Stratificazioni, Art Noble Gallery, Milan, Italy, 2023 (group); Trace – Formations of Likeness. Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2023 (group); Beauty And Terror: Sites Of Colonialism And Fascism, Madre, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy, 2022 (group); Shifting Dialogues: Photography from The Walther Collection,K21 Kunstsammlung, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2022 (group); E22 – Hacking identity, dancing diversity, Möllerei / Esch-Belval, Luxembourg, 2022 (group); Città Foresta, SRISA, Florence Italy, 2022 (solo); Europa, Oxalá, Mucem, Marseille, France, 2022 (group); L’inarchiviabile, KunstRaum Goethe, Rome, Italy, 2021 (group); Arquivo Urbano, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2019 (solo); The Other Chapter, PHotoESPAÑA, 2019 (group); An imaginary city, MAXXI, Rome, Italy, 2018 (group); Schengen, Villa Romana, Florence, Italy, 2018 (group); La Cité dans le Jour Bleu, Dak’art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal, 2018 (group); Recent Histories, Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany and New York NY, USA, 2017 (group); That, Around Which the Universe Revolve, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany, 2017 (group); Afrotopia, Bamako Encounters, Bamako, Mali, 2017 (group) and On Ways of Travelling, the Angolan Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2015 (group).
