Black velvet and Black Mirror. The first, black velvet, is the fabric on which Roméo Mivekannin has created the journey of eighteen works, all from the last two years, on display. The second, black mirror, is the title given to the exhibition, his first solo show in Italy, hosted at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, with a reference to the artist’s continuous self-portraiture, present in practically all the exhibited works, all in acrylic and mostly large-scale. Black Mirror is the exhibition of a great artist. We say this immediately, so that the light under which this critical contribution will take shape is clear. Mivekannin is a great artist because he has drawn from a very rich iconographic universe to rework it and create a multiform artistic mirror in which the observer must necessarily reflect themselves. The figures that occupy the space of each canvas question us, interrogate our conscience, question us about the human condition.
Roméo Mivekannin, “Black Mirror”, exhibition view, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Roberto Marossi
The impact with the first room, the project wall, is already very powerful: “Parle avec elle (Pina Bausch)” is the largest painting in the exhibition and has a dual inspiration. First, the film by Pedro Almodóvar “Talk to Her”; and then, the consequent conceptual connection with the dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch (actress in the film). Dance, in many African territories, including Benin where the artist comes from, is a central ritual practice in relationships between people. Thus imagining a work on this wall, Mivekannin has chosen a universal language, that of dance, as an ideal bridge between cultures and wanted to create this gigantic scene in which men and women, all with the artist’s face, look at us perhaps motionless, perhaps in an interval between two dances, on the right in the enormous black velvet that serves as background and support, while the left part of the space is immersed in the deepest darkness.
Roméo Mivekannin, “Black Mirror”, exhibition view, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Roberto Marossi
The north room of Collezione Maramotti, one of the two actual exhibition halls, thanks to Mivekannin’s works, presents itself as the evocative nave of a church. Nine works are displayed, of which four are drawn from immediately recognizable Caravaggesque subjects. “D’après Madeleine repentante. Le Caravage (1593-1594)” (magnificent and, perhaps involuntarily, queer the bearded variant of Magdalene’s face which, instead of being bowed as in the original painting, here is raised to the level of the observer’s gaze), “D’après Le crucifiement de Saint Pierre. Le Caravage (1593-1594)”, “D’après La conversion de Saint Paul. Le Caravage (1593-1594)” and “Le Martyr de Saint Mathieu. Le Caravage (1593-1594)” show from the title the artist’s recognition and inspiration (this happens with all works that precisely indicate their year of creation). The reinterpretations are characterized by the presence of Mivekannin’s face, placed in place of the original one of the most important figure. The typically Caravaggesque darkness is reproduced even more intensely by the black velvet that has absorbed Mivekannin’s acrylic: it is the function of the mirror that receives and returns. This technique is experimented here for the first time with very engaging and technically surprising results. Still in the wake of the most classical art, Mivekannin exhibits “Adam et Eve chassés de l’Eden. Masaccio (1424-1425)”, in which he lends his features, “D’après La femme à barbe. Ribera (1631)”, in which, as evident from the title, there is a new non-binary provocation. Mivekannin’s face seems to emerge from the darkness of the night and his penetrating gaze is truly direct, almost overwhelming the observer.
Roméo Mivekannin, “D’après La couleur de la grenade, Sergueï Paradjanov (1969)”, 2024, acrylic on black velvet, 150 x 300 cm, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Gregory Copitet
In the wake, instead, of contemporary works and not painting are the other three works exhibited in this room. “D’après Assassinat d’Hector Pieterson. Sam Nzima (Afrique du Sud, 1976)” takes us to the heart of South African apartheid. Hector Pieterson was thirteen years old when he was killed in Soweto by the police: a famous photograph by Sam Nzima portrays him in the arms of a fellow fighter as in a sort of pietà in movement. Mivekannin takes up exactly the pose that shines with additional luminosity when he places it on his usual black background. We move to Kosovo and still in a scenario of provoked death with “D’après la Veille funebre au Kosovo de Georges Merillon (1990)”, in which the artist takes up the harrowing photograph winner of World Press 1991, reproposing, with great suggestion, the elements dearest to him: scenic composition, figures that appear wrapped in religious light, very dark background behind. But the artistic apex of this part of the exhibition, Mivekannin reaches with the beautiful “D’après la couleur de la grenade. Serguei Paradjanov (1969)”, inspired by the famous film by the Armenian-Soviet director “The Color of Pomegranates”, an authentic metaphysical masterpiece (by necessity, to avoid the meshes of censorship) and, in this exhibition, a cover work. The artist portrays a series of men in the act of biting into a pomegranate, also referring to the multiform role of actress Sofiko Ciaureli who in the film plays both male and female characters.
Roméo Mivekannin, “Black Mirror”, exhibition view, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Roberto Marossi
The pattern room of Collezione Maramotti is the wide final area of this superb exhibition, where the need to strengthen the consciousness of the gaze becomes more urgent. If Caravaggio was the majority inspiration of the north room, in this large almost external hall of the exhibition venue one breathes a pregnant Pasolinian atmosphere. There are indeed three works that Mivekannin takes from Pasolinian cinema, even daring in terms of figurative audacity. Two works are inspired by the great director’s last film, namely “D’après Salò ou les 120 Journées de Sodome. Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975)” and the contamination in these cases is even more versatile than elsewhere. A man stands upright before us, he is black, has an athletic physique, is naked and has his fist closed almost to recall Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. The black power is very strong, cancel culture is powerfully claimed, Mivekannin exalts the blackness of his own face, lent here too to the figured subject. In the other work inspired by Pasolini’s controversial film there is an exhausted man leaning, almost resigned, against a chair: both are gaunt, he is emaciated, the object essential, the artist, through the double represented on velvet, looks us straight in the eyes, the body is not pink as in other cases but takes on gray tones. Still to Pasolini and his “Accattone” is inspired the other large black velvet present in this room. “Accattone d’après Pier Paolo Pasolini (1961)” represents the opposite of the other two Pasolinian works, almost to exalt the alpha (“Accattone” 1961) and the omega (“Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom”, 1975) of Pasolini’s filmography: here, a group of boys from a bar run away frightened, there is not a single man at the center of the scene, the group seems to flee in different directions, there is no focus but rather a set of frightened fragments.
Roméo Mivekannin, “Black Mirror”, exhibition view, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Roberto Marossi
Théodule-Augustin Ribot, French painter from the second half of the 19th century, is the protagonist of two homages having the same figured subject: “D’après Jésus et les docteurs, Théodule Ribot (seconde moitiè du XIX siècle)” in which, as in a photographic negative comparison, in one velvet the doctors are many and surround a Jesus with Mivekannin’s face, while in the specular work the doctors are all Mivekannin and Jesus is recognizable as in Christian iconography. The artist’s face is exalted by rewriting the images, destabilizing the observer’s gaze who finds themselves before a significant variation of an image codified over the centuries.
Roméo Mivekannin, “D’après Holy Motors, Léos Carax (2012)”, 2024, acrylic on black velvet, 140 x 200 cm, © Roméo Mivekannin, by SIAE 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris), ph. Gregory Copitet
Nicolas Régnier is instead an artist, Walloon we would say today, from the 17th century and, among the many Saint Sebastians he painted, he made one with the martyr upside down. In “D’après Saint Sébastien, Nicolas Régnier (XVII siècle)”, the sensual clarity of the saint’s sculpted body moves against the very black background of the velvet that retains light and at the same time reflects back a powerful luminosity. In 1840, Eugène Delacroix painted “The Shipwreck of Don Juan” depicting a group of men huddled on a lifeboat at the mercy of the sea. He could not know that about two centuries later Massimo Sestini would strengthen his fame thanks to a shot taken from the zenith of a boat crowded with immigrants in the infinity of the Mediterranean Sea. “D’après le naufrage de Don Juan d’après Delacroix (1840)” has a subtext, at once poetic and tragic, that places a great artist alongside the suffering of the many Africans who try to enter the European fortress: “It was not the sea that welcomed the migrants, but the migrants who welcomed the sea with open arms”. This critical contribution concludes with the most audacious velvet, also inspired by cinema, this time French. “D’après Holy Motors, Leos Carax (2012)”, is a homage to a protagonist who in the film is many characters, to audacity, to iconic contamination, to the superimposition of very distant symbols, as can be a (ma)donna who holds, as in a pietà, the body of a man (who has Mivekannin’s face) naked and visibly aroused.
Info:
Roméo Mivekannin. Black Mirror
09/03/2025 – 27/07/2025
Collezione Maramotti
Via Fratelli Cervi, 66 – Reggio Emilia
www.collezionemaramotti.org
I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.
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