Liste Art Fair Basel Ndayé Kouagou

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• Press release (ENG)

  AFTER AL A COIN IS A COIN

  If you were looking for direction this is definitely not the place, look elsewhere. Do you look elsewhere? I mean the real elsewhere, because I kind of know you, I have seen you looking at a coin, you've looked at one side and then the other, and for the more meticulous of you, you've looked at each side twice. Looking at two sides of the same coin is not exactly looking elsewhere. I know, shocking! I'm sorry you've been lied to all your life (also it's not the only lie in your life, but I'll come back to the other one another time), so what does it mean to look elsewhere? Maybe looking at another coin? That can be a beginning, but definitely not the end of the road, you're only planning on looking at coins, all your life? Really, one coin, then next one, then the next? See how at first it felt like looking elsewhere when you moved from your first coin to the second, and now it doesn't anymore?  Yes, after all a coin is a coin. So why did you feel like you were looking elsewhere after changing coins the first time? The answer is easy, that was the feeling of change, but always changing in the same way ends up not feeling like change anymore.
  
  Yes, all this was about change! I mean is there anything more powerful and frightening than change? Maybe fear itself, but that's also for another conversation. Change is key, key to where though? Key to a place of change! I'm sorry if I got you confused (I promise it was not on purpose, no, not this time). Let me explain: the goal was to look somewhere else, and we concluded that to succeed in this goal you needed to change, and then we understood that changing was a constant movement, an always changing movement. That's the true power of change, change is the key, and the door and also the space. If you're more spiritual you can rephrase and say: change is the true power, I personally will not say that, as I grew up in a space where spirituality is mocked, yes, my mom didn't like churches!
  
  Wow, all this from just looking at a coin? Damn, now I understand why they say money is powerful.
  
  BONUS PART:
  
  You really want more? From me? Damn what’s wrong with you?
  
  You know some things are easier to write than to say, like eichhörnchen (a squirrel in german), so here I am writing.
  
  I know I just said that some things are easier to write than to say, but I do believe that for some messages saying them out loud is the only true way, I do believe in the power of "oralité".
  
  These two are not the only contradictions going on in my life right now, my problem is that; I love to love and love to hate, try to live a life full of these two and you'll struggle with choosing sides, and god knows, sometimes you have to choose sides. What? You believed you'll be able to stay in the middle all your life? Nope girl, that's not possible, you'll have to choose sides, so choose wisely. Don't worry the world is well done, so the choice will not be as complicated as you can imagine, the choice will usually made simple by some sort of powerful magic, the choice will usually be between, left and right, up and down, good and bad, chocolate and vanilla, airbnb and hotel, apple and android, port and starboard, See? not that difficult, I'm sure you had an answer for all of them, without even having to think, what a beautiful world we live in, right? Right? I know
  
  

  Text by Ndayé Kouagou

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