
Exhibition DZIMAKPLAO
TESPRIT
21th May 2021 - 18th June 2021
Foli Kossi Gérard TETE, also known as Tesprit, is an artist who lives and works in Togo. As a free and independent young man, he tried and experienced a lot of activities to make a living: from masonry & gardening to painting & drawing.
During this period, he met with the DZIMAKPLAO- children without education-who live in the streets and most often have lost contact with their parents, their communities, and the society. They wander in these streets, our streets, left for themselves, trying to survive.
Tesprit succeeded in creating intimacy with these children. With his artistic gaze, he started to capture strong instants of their daily life: moments of sadness & despair but also of hope & joy, like when they meet up with their friends to play football or make a nice find in the rubbish.
So, he wanted to tell the story of those children, make them visible, immortalize them and started using pieces of worn shoes to create. With finesse, he forces us to watch them, observe them, enter their world, creating a contrast between the beauty of his pieces and the unacceptable nature of the DZIMAKPLAO living conditions.
His paintings are named after those children, his children as Tesprit would often refer to.