Famakan Magassa - Money Money Money: Gallery III, Accra

The exhibition follows a residency with the gallery in Accra and each painting emphasises moments of irony. Contending the different levels of socioeconomic exchange, the 2023 Norval Sovereign African Art Prize winner reflects on art’s relationship to theft and violence, to privacy and togetherness and to the ways we engage with the most common unit of exchange- money.

 

It is said that women and money rule the world, the former through seduction, the latter because it has become the supreme religion, dominating individuals, states, and the planet. For Magassa, the subject is vast and inexhaustible. Consequently, he deploys humour as a common thread to deal with the dark side of wealth.

 

Magassa’s provocative social commentaries come to life through his distinct colour palette of blues and reds. His human caricatures depict cynical takes on the lengths that humans will go to get ahead in life. The painter, whose figurative works depict a comical look at the themes of gluttony and greed, is interested in how the value of money ends up supplanting that of people. Magassa has decided to take the audience on a journey through the contrasts and contradictions of the global economy.

 

With expressions across the spectrum of sarcasm and solace, Magassa’s distorted forms speak to the obsession that society has with consumption. The compositions of his works include personas who have been forced into marriage, forced into labour, and volunteered for debauchery, some of them losing one shoe along the way. Magassa uses acrylic on canvas to represent his creatures with extended spines and protruding bellies in the homogenous colour blue which is used for all the artist’s figures. The lips of his caricatures are exaggerated in a bright red, some of them with three teeth protruding in a smile or in a grimace.