Through this new series, conceived during his residency in Casablanca, Hako Hankson questions the place of painting in a world shaped by geopolitical tensions. Without yielding to a logic of direct testimony, the artist develops a deeply inhabited body of work in which intimate experience intertwines with a universal scope. Portraiture continues to dominate the genres explored by the artist, yet it is now enriched by a narrative, epic, and mythical dimension that opens painting to a fertile dialogue between cultures, heritages, and imaginaries.
In the exhibition catalogue text, writer Olivier Rachet sheds light on the artist’s approach in these terms: “The latest series to which the painter has devoted himself is thus rooted in a strong cultural anchorage, and while portraiture continues to reign supreme, the narrative, as well as the epic and mythical dimensions of this painting, now appear in all their universality.”
He continues: “However, it would be mistaken to attribute an exclusively ethnographic dimension to this painting. On the contrary, it constantly draws nourishment from a dialogue with an art history that is, by nature, universal, as well as with its Moroccan context of production, which one would like to describe as fraternal. A spiritual kinship connects these portraits to Picasso’s Cubist painting, itself nourished by the fascinated discovery of what, at the beginning of the previous century, was referred to as ‘primitivist’ art. Totemic masks and sacred statuary here recover their full visual power. Yet it is above all with an urban art form privileging, like graffiti, speed of execution, that Hankson’s painting truly resonates.”
