filiations

Through her deliberately blurred lens, Olga Yaméogo reveals her subjects – often friends or family members - emphasising movement rather than a moment fixed in time. The exhibition title, Filiations, alludes to concepts of legitimacy in the connections (“relations”) between humans and land, as explored in the work of Édouard Glissant (1928-2011). Indeed, Yaméogo frequently references Glissant, the West Indian poet and philosopher who developed the concept of the“ creolisation” of the world.

Yaméogo identifies with this creolisation, which she describes as a “métissage that is not just about territory or blood ties, but above all cultural”. Glissant advocates for a fresh take on the concept of filiation through the prism of the All-World (“Tout-Monde”), where humans, animals, landscapes, cultures and spiritualities are linked in a constant state of exchange and flux. The term filiation evokes links of parentage and descent, and Glissant warns against societies that justify their claim to the land through God-given filiation. In the image of the composite West Indian societies that emerged from colonisation, Glissant sees creolisation as a model for understanding the modern world, where dematerialisation and free markets enable control over a territory without occupying it. Filiation no longer constitutes a claim to land or a blood relationship, and Yaméogo has re-appropriated the term to examine the deeper ties of identity between people and territories.

Yaméogo seeks to share the manifold filiations of people in flux. Throughout the world, countless migrants roam, each with their own multifaceted cultural identity, shaped by different countries, languages, cultures and citizenships. The question “Where are you from?” implies fuzzy logic, where all the answers are partly true and partly false. How can we convey the sum total of our identity, of where we come from, where our parents are from, where we have lived, where our friends and family are? How could we possibly record all this on an official identity document? In obscuring the faces of her subjects, Yaméogo respectfully and sensitively evokes their stories without ever overexposing them. 

Yaméogo’s personal histories and relationships are perceived rather than understood, suggestive of the journeys and connections that join us across the Tout- Monde. These filiations are rooted in bonds of trust, not of blood or documentation, and are a counterpoint to the modern borders that are designed to contain and divide, rather than to mark the transition from one landscape to another.

The shimmering, fuzzy logic of Yaméogo’s paintings celebrates fluctuating definitions of identity and the quivering of the world. She catches on canvas the hummingbird-like nature of an individual in perpetual physical and metaphysical movement. Blurred limbs in motion outline memories of the places we’ve passed through, reminding us how wandering (déambulation) can transform our perspective.

Text by Rosie Cook

With acknowledgments to Karen Seegobin and Bansoa Sigam