Roméo Mivekannin

Born in 1986 in Bouaké (Ivory Coast), multidisciplinary artist Roméo Mivekannin lives and works between Toulouse (France) and Cotonou (Benin).

After training as a cabinetmaker and studying art history, Mivekannin chose to enter the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Toulouse. As a student, he experimented with several mediums from sculpture to painting. Following his studies, he devoted himself to his work as a visual artist while beginning a thesis on the history of art, sociology, and architecture.

Mivekannin works at the crossroads of inherited tradition and the contemporary world, integrating his creations into an ancestral temporality and making his own rituals, which echo the Voudou cosmology that is still very much alive in Benin. Between painting, sculpture, and installation, his universe is multidisciplinary and ambitious. The artist plays with materials and seeks to upset the established boundaries between disciplines, enacting a formal and symbolic defiance that is unique to him.

With strength and subtlety, Mivekannin unravels the threads of our confinement a little more each time, thus questioning our collective and intimate heritage. The artist’s works propose a form of strategic resistance that fuses critical engagement with emotion.

He has held solo shows at Galerie Eric Dupont (Paris), Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan and Dakar), and Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin), among others. His work was also featured in the 2024 FITE Textile Biennial at Musée d’Art Roger Quilliot (Clermont-Ferrand, France) and When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland) in 2024 (previously at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Collezione Maramotti (Italy), Musée du Louvre Lens (France),Southern Guild Los Angeles (USA), Musée du Quai Branly (France), Biennale de Sharjah (UAE), Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium), and Fondation Blachère (France).

His work is included the collections of the Cité de la Musique (Paris, France), Currier Museum of Art (New Hampshire, US), Fondation Zeitz (South Africa), Fondation H (Antananarivo, Madagascar), Galerie Nationale d’art contemporain du Bénin (Cotonou, Bénin), Musée National du Quai Branly (Paris, France), Musée des Abattoirs (Toulouse, France), Sharjah Foundation (Sharjah, EAU), Verbund Collection (Vienna, Austria), and Collection Leridon (Paris, France).