Chloe Quenum

Episode 13Chloe Quenum
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Fractured self

Imagine yourself as a mosaic - each shard a memory, each fragment a story. Identity is fragmented, nonlinear, imperfect. Through collage, artists reassemble past and present into visual diaries, embracing the messiness of memory to reveal a self that is ever-evolving, resilient, and beautifully incomplete.

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Episode 13 of 14

Chloe Quenum

In this episode, we explore the world of Franco-Beninese artist Chloé Quenum, whose practice unravels the complexities of diasporic identity, memory, and cultural hybridity. Born in Paris with roots in Benin, and trained in both fine arts and the anthropology of writing, Quenum transforms everyday objects into carriers of layered histories.

 

Through symbols like woven mats and glassware, she reflects on the tension between displacement and belonging, asking how we carry “home” across distance. Her work speaks to the quiet resilience of navigating multiple worlds—and the beauty found in between.

Episode

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“My practice Is like a way of doing the archaeology of the invisible, a kind of investigative work questioning precisely, what Is the circulation of knowledge, know-how, objects, how they have been enriched by other cultures, how they have been erased, how they have been made invisible.”

- Chloe Quenum

Booker
Chloé QuenumBooker, 2024
120 x 80cm

Le Sceau de Salomon, Purple , 2018

This forms the foundation of an installation shaped by her reflections on the trade of plants and the widespread popularity of tattoos—both illustrating how symbols, once rich with meaning, can become purely ornamental. Titled The Seal of Solomon, after a medicinal plant, her first exhibition outside Europe (in Wellington) deepens her ongoing exploration of exotic imagery and its shifting contexts, a theme that takes on expanded significance in this new setting.

Délivrances
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Une sieste à Porto-Novo, 2022

In "Une sieste à Porto-Novo," Chloé Quenum captures a fleeting moment—a sliver of stillness that feels as much like a memory as it does a dream. The woven mat, with its earthy tones and intricate patterns, becomes both a surface and a portal, inviting us to reflect on what it means to pause, to belong, to exist between worlds. At its center, a fragment of a body peeks through—a quiet, intimate gesture that anchors us in the present while evoking echoes of another time, another place.

 

This work carries the essence of Porto-Novo, Benin’s capital, weaving together cultural memory and personal connection. The mat—both functional and symbolic—becomes a metaphor for the diasporic experience: layered, hybrid, suspended between tradition and transformation. Quenum’s art transforms this everyday object into something alive, something that speaks to the journeys we take and the stories we carry.

 

As part of her “Wonder, Wander” exhibition, this piece reflects Quenum’s gift for creating spaces where viewers can linger, wander, and wonder. Her practice consistently draws from cultural symbols, recontextualizing them to explore identity, movement, and the intersections of the personal and collective. The fragmentary nature of this work mirrors the diasporic condition itself—a state of being that is never fixed, always shifting, always in negotiation.

 

Standing before "Une sieste à Porto-Novo," we are reminded of the beauty in stillness, the richness of hybridity, and the resilience of stories that bridge time and place. It invites us to step into its quiet, to feel its warmth, and to reflect on how we, too, carry pieces of home with us, even as we create new ones. In its simplicity lies a profound complexity—a testament to the power of art to hold the weight of memory, belonging, and transformation.

Irène
Chloé QuenumIrène, 2018
200 x 300cm

Exhibition: Weary, 2025

Chloé Quenum’s first solo exhibition with Martina Simeti.

“I choose my materials. Everything is loaded with history.”

- Chloe Quenum

Rain
Chloé QuenumRain, 2024
120 x 80cm
Teardrops

Exhibition: Everything previous..., 2024

“Heure Bleue,” Quenum’s commissioned work, consists of a monumental reproduction - at scale 1 - of a bay within the Arsenale. It features a freestanding window (418 x 353 cm) with panes made of blown corded glass. Suspended from the beams are glass instruments forming a silent orchestra, floating between the architectural window of the pavilion and its spectral replica. These instruments, once stored at the Musée du Quai Branly, were played in different groups—Fon, Yoruba, Bariba—part of Dahomey’s kingdom, connecting the installation to sounds and chants related to the Amazone parades.

 

The replication of these instruments enhances their aesthetic appeal and adds a new layer of meaning that echoes their complex histories. It explores shifts in meaning and value as objects traverse cultural and temporal boundaries.

 

The use of glass by Chloé Quenum is not merely anecdotal; it has strong ties to the slave trade in West Africa and is connected to the exercise of power. Murano glass beads were used for bartering throughout the entire period of the Atlantic trade. Blown glass crafted conveys irregularities, cords, and bubbles; its materiality distorts perceptions of reality. This particular glass, known to have been used for colonial architectures, can be found in historical manufactories under the name of “colonial glass.”

 

 

"It is important for me to mark Benin’s first presence at the Venice Biennial, a city of trade and exchanges, drawing attention to questions of gazes, temporalities, transmissions and circulation. L’Heure bleue is the moment at twilight when thing are getting hard to discern for the sight. This installation is an invitation to take the time to consider the multiple layers of history, and narratives, at the rythm of the changing daylight.

Exhibition: Everything previous is fragile, 2024

Exhibition "Everything previous is fragile" at La Biennale Di Venezia.

Featured Artist

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Chloé Quenum
Artist
Chloé Quenum
B.1983, French

Chloé Quenum handles graphic, linguistic, eclectic, ambiguous, and mobile elements drawn from different cultures, extracting them from their context to give them new consistency through different processes of transmutation. The elements take on a new form of life, breathing into material signs, decorative assemblages of indeterminate origin. The artist invites us to examine the effect of contextual displacement and transfiguration on these objects, while questioning their power of evocation or engendering their ability to generate new narratives through capillarity. Here, visible and invisible traces, rebuses engraved on calabashes from the Kingdom of Dahomey become organic, living, autonomous, and animated forms; there, the Hebrew alphabet is redistributed in a serial sequence of ideograms; patterns printed on wax fabric are transformed into abstract symbols that look indescribable at first glance; here again, tattoos move from skin to paper; contours take shape and relief, frames become anthropomorphic, provoking unexpected encounters while blurring our usual temporal, spatial, artistic, or disciplinary reference points. Nothing could be further from the essential grasp of all these elements—and yet they are certainly carriers of a history, one yet questioned and distanced from its original meaning—which can only be understood by those who wield the codes. By performing one final act of transfiguration, Chloé Quenum manages to compose new narratives, often, if not always, using a coded and cryptic language of her own. Her work has recently been featured in solo and group exhibitions, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Pau (2023), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2021, 2014), the Fondation Pernod Ricard (2021, 2014, 2013), the Centre Pompidou (2019), and the Fondation Louis Vuitton (2015), among other venues. Her works are visible in several public and private collections, including the Musée national d'art moderne – Centre Pompidou (Paris), the FRAC Alsace, Île-de-France, Grand Large, and Nouvelle-Aquitaine, as well as the Crédit municipal de Paris, the Kadist Foundation, and the Lafayette Anticipations Foundation. Chloé Quenum represented Benin at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. ...

More Works By: Chloé Quenum

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