Writings

From Hassan − about Hassan

I LOVE YOU WITH MY AK-47 (2020)

This is an excerpt from Hassan Musa's commentary on his themed work " I LOVE YOU WITH MY AK-47".

Gauguin’s work inspired me when I started a new series of images entitled « I LOVE YOU WITH MY AK-47 ». An AK-47 (Automatic Kalashnikov 47) is not only a gun but it is also a symbol of armed Liberation movement in the colonies...

GHOSTS OF AFRICA IN EUROPE'S MUSEUM (2007)

To shed light on the current terms of the debate posed by European ethnomuseologists regarding the status of African objects that populate their museums, Hassan Musa cunningly takes politically incorrect shortcuts: What to do with Africans? What about the place they occupy in the time and space of Europeans? What should be done with the stuffed African corpses—like that of the Hottentot Venus—that lie in their cabinets? Or even: why are contemporary "African" artists called upon to recycle these objects that were once violently stolen from their ancestors? Delicious.

BANANA ALLEGORY (2006)

"I see Josephine Baker as an American choreographer (translate : European choreographer), who managed to build a remarkable whole repertoire of primitivist choreography. Choreographies that she presented, on European stages, as “ African ” dance. But Josephine Baker was not only a choreographer, she was also a black American who found refuge in Europe after having experienced the misery and brutality of American racism at the beginning of the 20th century." 

This is an excerpts of the correspondance between Hassan Musa and Kerstin Pinther for the catalog of the “ Black Paris ” exhibition (Bayreuth, Frankfurt and Brussels, 2006-2008).

10 TIPS ON HOW NOT TO BECOME AN AFRICAN ARTIST (1995)

To my friends  who asked me why I do not feel comfortable in « Contemporary African Art » although I am African.

Here is a little piece I wrote to accompany my performance at the major event AFRICA '95, back in 1995, in London.

About HASSAN − From Hassan

MUSA LE FOU, MUSA LE SAGE - Simon Njami (2015)

On the occasion of the solo exhibition YO MAMA at the Galerie Maïa Muller in Paris, notorious curator Simon Njami wrote about Hassan Musa:

" [...] Ernst Bloch would have been happy to meet Hassan Musa. He, who, in the spirit of utopia, lamented the helplessness into which human society was already sinking. Hassan Musa's hand has not stopped tinkering. Hassan Musa's mind has not forgotten how to play. But to play, one must have that ironic distance that allows one to laugh at everything, but with anyone... »

EYE FOR AN EYE, IMAGE FOR AN IMAGE - Hassan Musa in Conversation with Jean-Hubert Martin (2014)

In 2014, Hassan Musa wrote a letter to famous art historian and curator Jean-Hubert Martin to answer him about a proposition to take part in the exhibition "Partage d'Exotisme". 

The letter itself was later published as the foreword of the exhibition's catalog. In the meantime Hassan Musa and Jean-Hubert Martin engaged in a conversation about identity, politics, and the state of the world, including colonization and the status of artists in Sudan.