Pélagie Gbaguidi
1965, Bruxelles, Belgique
Pélagie Gbaguidi (Dakar, Senegal, 1965) is a contemporary painter and artist of Beninese origin living and working in Brussels. In 1995, she received her diploma from the École des Beaux-Arts Saint-Luc in Liège.
Pélagie Gbaguidi’s work is an anthology of signs and traces of traumas and focuses on colonial and postcolonial history. The artist qualifies herself as a contemporary griot. The term traditionally refers to a storyteller from West Africa who is the keeper of oral stories and cultural traditions. She sees herself as a mediator between individual memory and ancestral past. Her paintings and drawings have a performative character: she often uses parts of her body to apply paint or pigments to the canvas. The images created by Gbaguidi through painting, drawing, performance, and installation seek to move beyond binary thinking, archetypes, and simplifications.
Pélagie Gbaguidi has participated in the Berlin Biennale (2020), documenta 14 in Kassel (2017), Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), and Dakar Biennale (2004, 2006, 2008, 2014, and 2018). Her work has been presented in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, WIELS (Brussels), Musée Rochechouart, Middelheimmuseum (Antwerp), Stadtmuseum (Munich), MMK (Frankfurt), National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.). Her first solo exhibition in a British institution was held at Mimosa House, London (2023).
