AG18 Gallery shows Hako Hankson Born in 1968, lives and works in Douala/Cameroon.
He represented Cameroon at the Venice Biennale 2024. Hankson takes us into a world that the people experience as comprehensively animated. They do not claim to subjugate nature. They interact – spiritually and ritually – with flora and fauna, gods, spirits and demons, with the living and the dead. They are filled with myths and legends. This is how they form identity and social affiliation. This can be discovered in Hankson’s figures, masks, symbols, characters and constellations. In developed industrialized countries, the prevailing belief is that an analytical mind is the key to a successful life. But this is not how most people in the world think, as anthropologist Joseph Henrich’s studies have shown us. Those who only pay homage to ‘rationality’ and ‘individualism’ are indeed ‘peculiar’: ‘The Weirdest People in the World’. Hankson invites viewers into an enigmatic culture to cross ideological boundaries, adopt new perspectives and experience the world anew. He himself is a border crosser. Fascinated by modern technology and industrial progress, he trained as a car mechanic. But he is also influenced by his father, a sculptor, musician and spiritual leader. Hako Hankson paints with bold colors, combines different times and spaces, creates vibrant tension. He celebrates the unity of body and soul, of people and nature, of the present characterized by the past. Spiritually related to fundamental questions of human existence. Painters from Picasso to Basquiat have incorporated elements of African art into their works. Often without reference. Hankson is rooted in this culture, harbors its diversity, draws on its centuries-old resources and thus gives global culture its own impetus
