Laeïla Adjovi is a Beninese and French storyteller living in Contonou, Benin. She has been inspired by her life living across Gabon, South Africa, France, India and New-Caledonia. Her work touches upon the themes of transcendence, hybridity, sedimentation of identities, circulation of memories and the notion of African heritage. She showed in the 2024 Dakar Biennale with an immersive installation of Cotton Blues. This was a momentous return after winning the 2018 Dakar Biennale Grand Prize. In 2022, she participated in And I Must Scream at the Carlos Museum in Atlanta She began the project “Cotton Blues” in November 2023, in northern Benin, with farmers from the Bariba community. Described as “white gold”, cotton is a crucial raw material in the history and economy of the African continent. With this series, she is exploring a wide range of material through an artistic and artisanal approach to photography. Using the cyanotype technique, she creates a connection between painting and photography: cross-processing, multiple exposures and alterations of the images amplify the dreamscape aspect of the portraits and scenes of harvest. The title of the project derives from the Blues expressed and sung by enslaved Africans in the Americas. Their songs and melancholy cross space and time echoing the distress of contemporary African producers, who are facing unfair competition from subsidised producers, and the vagaries of climate change.
Laeïla Adjovi
