Brutalism
2023
The Brutalist aesthetic has played a major role in the construction of the national identity of many West African countries. One of the characteristics of this type of Modernist architecture is that it is never based on any local know-how and no particular culture can claim to own it.
Found in one of the largest second-hand clothes collection sites in the world, from the West to Accra in Ghana, and reproduced to “human scale”, these heels reminded Jojo Gronostay of the Brutalist buildings in Africa that shaped his imagination. Like a succession of Brutalist monuments, this heel series questions the economic, political, colonial and cultural exchanges between the African continent and the Western world
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Artist presented as part of the European Month of Photography (EMOP)
With the support of the Gœthe-Institut
Portfolio
About the artist
Born in 1987, Jojo Gronostay is a German-Ghanaian artist who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. In his practice, Jojo Gronostay deals with issues of identity and representation, platforms, recycling and the in-between. He explores the political and economic structures between Europe and Africa. He has created the platform DWMC (Dead White Man Cloths), which allows him to intervene in these exchange cycles between the two continents.