Aichi Triennale 2019

Located inside Shirakawa Park, the Nagoya City Art Museum is girdled by garden paths. Along these paths and in the sunken garden that can be entered from the museum's basement, a total of about forty garbage bins have been newly installed by this artist. Printed with the national flags of 54 African countries, the bags in these garbage bins look much more colorful than the garbage bags we know from everyday life.
Toguo is an artist from Cameroon who has been engaging in creative work against a backdrop that is mainly defined by the relationships between Africa and the West. When reflecting on the position of African countries and the various things the colonizing nations have been forcing on them in the course of history since the colonial days, the visitor realizes how these garbage bags fulfill at once a symbolic function.
The garbage collected at the exhibition venue will not be taken directly to Africa, but as long as the idea prevails that everything is fine if we take "bothersome things" far away and out of sight, we will never be able to work out fundamental solutions to the myriad problems the world is drowning in.