Nathanaël Vodouhè
The creative practice of visual artist Nathanaël Vodouhè, provides a catharsis of sorts to the tragedy of human alienation.
Young, gifted with a sharp mind, a steady hand and an innate ability for sketching, Vodouhè commands a creative corpus of incomparable poetry, yet one that bares apparent the uncomfortable deviances plaguing the history of mankind.
Vodouhè's arresting visual narrative, brings into play polarizing emotions like kindness & cruelty, or dogmatic stances on good vs evil, light vs darkness or intemporality vs finality. Seemingly interacting in harmony, upon closer look, these emphatic dichotomies denounce in fact, the sins of a modern society trapped in a race against itself, evermore concerned with mass production, the accumulation of material possessions and generating profits, at any cost, even if it means consuming our inherent humanity from the inside out.
As if rIsing from the magmatic pools of alien volcanos, these totemic entities are the reincarnations of scorched souls. Enthralled in parts, baring ashen cracks and adorned with imperial cloaks of shimmering pigmentations, each ethereal sculpture is hinting at the fuming wounds inflicted by the harshness of a modern world that too often undermines the symbiotic beauty of human interrelations and instead chooses to destroy its environment.
Vodouhè’s modern masterpieces further interrogate us on notions of addiction, doctrinal conundrums, mass consumerism and the hypertensions resulting from the exploitation of man upon his own kind.
Encompassing the mediums of painting, sculpture, installation and performance, Voudouhè's body of work is imbued with the history, tradition and spiritual ordinance of his native Benin.