Ndéyé Kouagou’s Italian debut unfolds a slippery terrain of text, performance and fractured meaning at Fotografia Europea 2026.
23 April 2026
In conjunction with Fotografia Europea 2026, ‘Ghosts of the Moment’, Collezione Maramotti presents Ndéyé Kouagou’s first solo exhibition in Italy. Bringing together recent works and new commissions, the exhibition foregrounds the Paris-based artist’s language-driven practice, in which text, performance, and image converge to probe the instability of meaning, the slippages of communication, and the elusive contours of contemporary subjectivity. The artist reflects on the exhibition in conversation with ART AFRICA.
Ndayé Kouagou, Heaven’s truth, 2026 © Ndayé Kouagou
Suzette Bell-Roberts: Your practice is deeply rooted in language. What draws you to its instability? How do you begin working with text as material?
Ndayé Kouagou: I have always been interested in language, playing with words, commenting, writing, and talking—maybe a bit too much and a bit too loud, according to my school teachers. I first thought I’d be a writer, but my quest for freedom brought me to contemporary art, a space where words can become anything or can just be words. Also, language and text are cheap media to work with and even cheaper to perform, allowing someone like me, who hasn’t been to art school and has no money to invest, to have a practice. That’s why I started with performances, transforming my texts into a conversation in which the audience could respond through their voices or their bodies.
Ndayé Kouagou, Change is key, 2022. © Ndayé Kouagou Courtesy of Collezione Maramotti
In ‘Heaven’s truth’, the voice often feels both intimate and unreliable. How do you approach the construction of a speaking voice that resists authority?
Honesty is the key. In my writing process, I allow myself to doubt as much as possible; I believe that it’s in doubt that real feelings lie. The intimacy of doubt suppresses any form of authority. That’s where I want to bring people through my work, so they can doubt and rethink things. I’m not the one who is going to bring answers; all I’m doing is creating a space to authorise people to think. And about being unreliable, aren’t we all a bit unreliable?
Ndayé Kouagou, Look elsewhere, 2022. © Ndayé Kouagou Courtesy of Collezione Maramotti.
The exhibition introduces a new body of work inspired by the fotoromanzo. What interested you in this format, and how did you adapt it within your practice?
In a previous video, “Here and elsewhere” (2024), I staged a fake street interview in which people were asked, “What do you think of what’s happening here and elsewhere?” It was the first time I brought multiple voices into one video, where usually there is only one character. So for “Heaven’s Truth,” I started thinking of ways to bring different personas into the work, but I was not interested in having them speak directly, and I remembered the photo-roman format and how it was, in fact, a way of forcing a voice into a body. It’s interesting to me how the same image can say one thing, and by changing the caption or adding a text bubble, it can say something totally different. That’s what I’m interested in now, creating images and giving them different meanings. Do people read what they want to read, or do they read what they’re told to read?
Ndayé Kouagou, Two sides, 2022.© Ndayé Kouagou.
Your works often hover between humour and unease. How do you navigate this tension, and what does it allow you to access conceptually?
I’m always thinking of the public as not accustomed to contemporary art and its code. Humour is just a tool to make whatever is coming easier to digest. I want people to leave my exhibition with something; a smile or a laugh is already something. Also, to return to a space of doubt and unease, it will be a bit rude to bring people into these spaces without giving them anything to counterbalance. Unease is just an aftereffect of doubt.
Ndayé Kouagou, A coin is a coin, 2022. © Ndayé Kouagou Courtesy of Collezione Maramotti.
An alter ego frequently inhabits your performances and videos. How does this figure function in relation to your own subjectivity?
The character present in most of my videos is more a vessel than an alter ego; the body is mine, but the voice is dubbed by Portuguese-Zimbabwean actress Salber Lee Williams. This persona represents a form of “everybody”; it’s a character without a name, origin, or even history. It’s meant to reflect the viewer’s feelings, not just mine. In the new work shown at the Collezione Maramotti, I’m playing a new character. This one has a story and even a name, so the voice is different. It’s dubbed by Hana Hussein, who has a story similar to the character, a first-generation African descendant in the Netherlands.
Ndayé Kouagou, A coin is a coin, 2022. One-channel video.
The narratives you construct resist resolution. What importance do you place on ambiguity and open-endedness in shaping the viewer’s experience?
Ambiguity and open-endedness are again tools, not goals. I believe in the viewer’s intelligence. I do not need to bring a clear answer; I myself do not have one. Not only that, but I also know that the questions that animate me exist in many others, and I want the result of my work to be a collective reflection on questions that animate us all.
Ndayé Kouagou, A coin is a coin, 2022. One-channel video.
A recurring question in your work asks, “Are you looking elsewhere?” What does “looking elsewhere” mean to you, as a gesture, a strategy, or perhaps a form of refusal?
“Looking elsewhere” is a form of decentralisation. I ended up being obsessed with what can be seen as different, as I am myself different from the majority, being Black in France and more generally in the Western world. It’s not even about looking far; it’s just about looking with a different paradigm.
The exhibition is on view at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, until July 26, 2026.
