A vivid view of an African's Africa

Romuald Hazoumè is the first African to be given a solo show in Imma. He is a fitting choice, writes AIDAN DUNNE, because his jerry cans and videos deliver a show that is diverse, accessible and very entertaining

IMMA’S CURRENT exhibition of the work of Romuald Hazoumè is, surprisingly, the museum’s first solo show given over to an African artist. And, encouragingly, Hazoumè is an African artist with a profile in the European and American art world who continues to reside in his homeland rather than, say, moving closer to the centre of the action in the West. In fact, one of the things that makes his work particularly absorbing is that it is firmly rooted in his own geographical, cultural and historical terrain.

If that makes it all sound a bit theoretical and worthy, fear not. You’re unlikely to come across another exhibition this year that’s as rich, diverse and downright entertaining, all without sacrificing anything in terms of formal and aesthetic qualities. Hazoumè has a deft touch with imagery, materials and also, as his video works demonstrate, timing.

He lives in Cotonou, the largest, busiest city in the Republic of Benin in West Africa, though he travels almost every day to his studio in the country’s capital, Porto-Novo, an hour or so to the east, where he was born. The road he takes is a busy coastal thoroughfare, and it continues on to the nearby border with Nigeria. It’s a route and a routine that engendered much of work that makes up his exhibition.

The economy in Benin is based on cotton production, basic agriculture and trade, but not oil. Nigeria, on the other hand, is a major oil producer. Predictably, there is a vigorous, apparently informal and small-scale traffic in smuggled oil across the border and specifically along the coast road. The traffickers are known collectively, as he titles one piece, as the Kpayo Army (kpayo being the denatured petrol they carry). The movement of the primary ingredient – oil – inevitably encourages diverse commercial activities and, as Imma director Enrique Juncosa who co-curated the show, notes: “One can find almost anything for sale on that road, from food to clothes, electric and electronic parts, cleaning products or livestock.”

Central to the whole process of the transport of materials, from oil to rice to medicines, is the plastic jerry can and similar highly portable, usually plastic containers. Fifty-litre, 25-litre and other miscellaneous containers, often inflated to increase capacity, are conveyed in huge numbers by various means, including boats and motorcycles. The motorcycles look extraordinarily old and weather-beaten and massively over-loaded and, given the nature of their cargo, occasionally come to grief. Hazoumè has called them "rolling time-bombs" and one of his videos is titled La Roulette Béninoise.

While there is a clear awareness and criticism of the power relations between Africa and the West in his work, he is anything but a post-modernist commentator making ironic points. One thing that constantly comes across is his fundamental respect for human ingenuity manifested in inventive responses to given constraints and limitations.

The plastic jerry can has become a staple material for him. Perhaps his most famous work, La Bouche do Roi,draws on an infamous 18th-century print of the layout of the slaveship Brookes. Hazoumè used 304 masks, fashioned from plastic cans, to stand in for the occupants. Purchased by the British Museum, the work was first exhibited in 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of the outlawing of the slave trade. It is by no means morally simplistic, though, and acknowledges the ambivalent role of Benin, then the kingdom of Dahomy, with its highly militarised past in slaving.

The beautiful panoramic photograph that concludes the exhibition is a typically pointed comment from Hazoumè. It depicts a huge, sprawling animal market among palm trees and it's titled Market Forces: Better to Sell Meat than Men!His exhibition includes two videos about the kpayo army, as well as photographs in which the traffickers feature. There are also many masks, fashioned from plastic containers and other discarded objects and materials. His often minimal interventions invest these workaday things with extraordinary personality and vitality. His paintings, in quite a different vein, are starkly diagrammatic, employing a series of spare symbolic forms.

Benin is known for its thriving musical scene, and has produced such performers as Angélique Kidjo and jazz guitarist Lionel Loueke. Hazoumè nods towards that with a vibrant sculpture, MIP – Made in Porto Novo, which consists of a quartet of outsized jazz instruments fashioned from plastic containers on metal armatures, complete with a boisterous soundtrack assembled from recordings of the day-to-day work of the kpayo army.

He addresses a wealth of material in several ways, always with great sympathy, good humour and ingenuity. When contemporary artists opt to become re-branded sociologists, which they do with dispiriting regularity, they often lose whatever it was that made them interesting as artists in the first place. There’s a strong current of sociology in Hazoumè’s work, in that it is terrifically informative about the social and economic world at its heart but, bucking the trend, he doesn’t sacrifice anything by incorporating such material. Quite the reverse, in fact.

He is of Yoruba descent, and he describes himself as an artist in a specialised, Yoruba sense, as an aré. An aré is an artist in conventional terms, but more besides. As Gerard Houghton writes in his catalogue essay: “Tradition dictated that an aré must travel and settle among other peoples, to perfect and pass on the skills he carries with him.” (There is no mention of a female aré). The aré is a cultural intermediary with a progressively developing body of skills.

As Hazoumè interprets his traditional role: “The main task facing a good aré today is to find a medium to show what Africa really is, right at this moment.” As he notes, today one can find many artists “from Africa” in Paris, New York, “and everywhere else”. They are from Africa, “but it’s not easy to learn anything about Africa itself from looking at their work. They are consumed by western art and are all making western art products.” Visit his exhibition and you really will learn something about present-day Africa.

Romuald Hazoumè, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham Until May 15