Georges Adéagbo in conversation with
Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy
as part of the exhibition by Georges Adéagbo
La lumière qui fait le bonheur...

26 May 2021, 7 pm
Live-Stream
In French

Using the exhibition La lumière qui fait le bonheur... at the KINDL as a starting point, Georges Adéagbo and Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy (Chair for Modern Art History, Technical University Berlin) will discuss the migration of objects, among other topics. The conversation will be hosted by Stephan Köhler, co-curator of the exhibition at the KINDL.

Georges Adéagbo (* 1942 in Cotonou, Benin) lives in Cotonou and Hamburg. His work has been shown internationally including the Biennials of Shanghai (2016), Dakar (2014), Venice (2009 and 1999, awarded the Jury Prize), São Paulo (1998), and Johannesburg (1997), and at documenta 11 (Kassel, 2002). He has had solo exhibitions at the Warburg-Haus, Hamburg (2019); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (2018); Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2016); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2014); MAK, Vienna (2009); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2004); and P.S.1 in New York (2000), among others. In 2006 and 2007 he had a residency in Berlin with a grant from the DAAD’s Artists in Berlin Programme. Adéagbo’s works are part of the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, among others.

Stephan Köhler (* 1959 in Hamburg) studied at Cooper Union New York, and Vienna School of applied arts. He curates exhibitions since 1986 (Stealing Diamonds, Venice) and founded the non profit association „Kulturforum Sud-Nord“ Hamburg Cotonou 2005. He regularly invites artists to give workshops in Benin on socially burning themes, followed by exhibitions and recently launched “Reversed Explorations” a thematic artists’ residence in Hamburg to permute the roles of the explorers and the explored with guests from the Global South. Köhler is the curatorial and logistic interface for Georges Adéagbo’s exhibitions since 1999, when he invited him to create a 1 day only installation on the Campo Arsenale Venice. This intervention led to Adéagbo receiving an honorary mention of the Jury of the Biennial, as first artist of African origin. 

Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy (* 1972 in Paris, France) is Professor of Modern Art History at the Institute of Art Studies and Historical Urban Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin since 2009. In 2016 she was awarded the Leibniz Prize by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Bénédicte Savoy is a member of the Berlin-​Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as of the German Academy for Language and Literature. In 2016 she was made professor at the Collège de France in Paris.