"We know to what extent memory is not only composed of layers accumulated one on top of the other, but also contains gaps, abysses, caves adorned or not with paintings, figures, and forms that continue to surprise us and whose origins we either poorly understand or pretend to misunderstand.

In these gaps are buried indiscreet dreams, a few hidden secrets, very present nonetheless, very intrusive, certainly. Their sudden encounter in the works of Hassan Musa, on canvas and in the caves of memories, brings forth disquieting reminiscences, obscure concretions that revive thoughts buried in the meanders of art history.

Hassan Musa does not play with history; it is a dangerous, murky game, full of unspoken truths, misunderstandings, perhaps resentments, and skewed visions on both sides. He brings together on the same stage, placing precisely side by side, elements of distant histories whose protagonists are well-known: Paul Gauguin, painter (1848–1903), created more than five hundred works that are admired, collected, and exhibited worldwide; Mikhail Kalashnikov, engineer (1919–2013), designed around one hundred fifty weapons that are appreciated, produced, and used around the world.

These are stories that have been told a thousand times, stories whose exact course we no longer know, remembering only the end, which is terrible, and which intertwine characters who are both good and evil, just like in the tales children like to tell each other, frightening! One could not put it better—imaginary. Such is the mysterious and disturbing little vahine lying on her stomach, depicted in the Gauguin painting preserved in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, whose title here is particularly eloquent: *Manao Tupapau* (The Spirit of the Dead Watching).

Hassan Musa takes up the spirit of the dead and, as a watchman, gives each their due homage because everything overlaps and jostles: the printed fabric on which he paints, which speaks to the work, no doubt industrial, of the person who made it; the ornamental motifs—flowers, birds, foliage—that adorn the scenes and refer to supposed paradises; the titles, obviously, words of which, as we know, we must be wary, which reveal a fragment of truth when the painter weaves on the canvas, in the colors and figures, another story, a story that at first glance might seem like a simple tale to lull the children of the past to sleep, including those who have suffered the violence of men."

- Laurent Busine - Art historian and curator - Introduction of the journal published by the Galerie Maïa Muller on the occasion of the exhibition (Courtesy of the Galerie Maïa Muller)

Photographies courtesy of the Galerie Maïa Muller