Ndayé Kouagou at the Maramotti collection makes us doubt even ourselves

It invites us, after all, to do a self-psychoanalytic work in which we question our certainties, looking for a continuous change that, instead of confusing, leads to a new, perhaps more aware self.

The works in the exhibition trigger a reflection on truth - real, potential or imaginary - on vulnerability, discomfort and power dynamics, creeping into the folds of the contradictions of our subjectivity and the paradoxes of contemporary society.

The video installation Here & Elsewhere (2024) stages, as described by the artist himself, a message for everyone. The narrative alternates between fictitious news reports and dissertations with a paradoxical tone, illustrated by a contemporary aedo with the artist's body and female voice, who ends up administering advice and guru-like statements to an audience in crisis. Divided into three chapters and three rooms, it constitutes the central, theatrical work from which the others emanate.

The following rooms of the exhibition present some works from recent years, from which the new production Heaven's truth.

In the body of work linked to the video work A coin is a coin (2022) - already part of the Collezione Maramotti archive - the artist performs an allegorical monologue that challenges our understanding and perception of reality. Starting from abstract conceptual considerations about the two sides of a coin, Kouagou manipulates the viewer's beliefs and prejudices, coming to question and interrogate us about power and the true meaning of freedom.

Kouagou's creative practice, articulated between visual art and performance and often inhabited by his alter ego, is activated by language. The texts elaborated by the artist are the origin and focus of videos, installations and live performances in which the instability of language, the opacity of words and the slippage of meaning inherent in media and interpersonal communication emerge, creeping and powerful. Through dialogues, monologues, questions and statements that elude any clear definition of the subject matter, Kouagou touches deep chords of consciousness and the unconscious, questioning individual and collective attitudes towards the world.

The Heaven's Truth exhibition is a disorienting narrative experience, at once playful and existential and, at the same time, a liberating and reassuring journey that authorises and accommodates doubt, the meaninglessness of human actions, the impossibility of an unambiguous reading and response to the things of life, communicating the increasingly necessary need for human unity and sharing.

Ndayé Kouagou - Heaven's truth, Collezione Maramotti until 26 July 2026