René Tavares São Tomé and Principe, 1983

Présentation

René Tavares’ work is based on a process of research spanning through archives, photographs, and literature while bringing to the front stage themes related to historical and socio-political issues that affected different African countries. With a preference for painting and drawing, Tavares’ artistic practice also includes photography, video, and installation. The artist’s work evolves and expands in the form of projects and series that develop over time according to his own experiences of transition between different artistic languages, between the African and European continents, between insular and continental Africa, also between the local and the global, the individual and the collective. By questioning assimilated, neglected, and forgotten heritages and challenging the rigidity of categories and prejudices, the artist’s works are produced in an impulsive and engaged mode to raise awareness and trigger processes of resilience and social empowerment.

Using a palette of rich, deep, and earthy colors and working the canvas in layers and all over, Tavares' figurative universe, with its dreamlike atmosphere, is filled with memories and human presence, faces and gazes that look at us throughout space and time. The works also emphasize iconographic and symbolic elements such as cotton flower fields and plantations, specific animals, objects and housings, and the depiction of group portraits. These collective pictures of men and women, either standing peacefully or shown in their interactions and daily activities, aim to reflect on the historical processes of hybridization and miscegenation happening between several ethnic groups, communities, and cultures including components assimilated during the colonial and post-colonial eras. Either through his paintings or multi-medium installations which often included striking words referring to racism and discrimination, Tavares fuses references taken from ancestral practices and belief systems, collective memories, and heritage with contemporaneity and globalization. Thus, the whole work highlights the processes of appropriation, integration, and merging of heterogeneous religious, social, and cultural components that compose many African cultures.

Tavares holds a Bachelor's in Fine Arts and Visual Arts from the Dakar School of Fine Arts (Senegal), a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts, Painting and Photography from the Rennes School of Fine Arts (France), and a Master's in Art and Heritage Sciences from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (Portugal). Highlights of his career include the selection as a finalist for the EDP Foundation New Artists Award (2022), the Public Vote Prize for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2022), the nomination for Africa’s most influential new artistic talent (FNB Joburg Art Fair, 2018), and the Artist Revelation Prize at São Tomé and Príncipe’s biennale of Art and Culture (2002). René Tavares' work is included in several relevant collections, such as the Collection of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI of Marocco, the PLMJ Foundation (Portugal), Kloser Contemporary Art, AAD - African Artist for Development, Omali Lodge - HBD Group, Sindika Dakolo Collection, World Bank Collection of the Government of São Tomé and Principe, EDP Foundation Collection, Lisbon City Council Collection, Norval Foundation Collection and Schulting Art Collection.

Available Works

Solo Exhibition Catalogue

Œuvres

René Tavares
African Garden, 2023
Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
232 x 290 cm (total) // 58 x 58 cm (each-framed)

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René Tavares
African Garden, 2023
Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
58 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
African Garden, 2023
Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
58 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
African Garden, 2023
Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
58 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
African Garden, 2023
Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
58 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
Bailarinas de Quintal, 2024
Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
200 x 186 cm

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René Tavares
Bumbo - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
173 x 152 cm

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René Tavares
Cabrito - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
173 x 150 cm

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René Tavares
Contadora de estórias e a galinha, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
140 x 110 cm
Vendu
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René Tavares
Crioulo - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
180 x 152 cm

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René Tavares
Escarumba - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
178 x 148 cm

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René Tavares
Grand ma's memories, 2023
Oil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and gold paper on raw cloth
177 x 171 cm

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René Tavares
Grosso - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
170 x 144 cm

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René Tavares
Ladies of Themselves, 2024
Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
182 x 162 cm

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René Tavares
Leve Leve, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 200 cm

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René Tavares
Leve Leve Mood, 2023
Oil, pigment, and acrylic on canvas
158 x 182 cm

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René Tavares
Meeting to hear the Atlantic Sound, 2023
Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
175 x 205 cm

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René Tavares
Memórias para curar o futuro, 2019
India ink, pigment, and linoleum on Chinese calligraphy paper
76 x 47 cm

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René Tavares
Mulato - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
Stencil and pigment on cloth
174 x 150 cm

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René Tavares
Nativo - Carruagem Lusa, 2022
Stencil and pigment on cloth
160 x 160 cm

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René Tavares
Past and the future together, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
140 x 110 cm
Vendu
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René Tavares
Petit Dejeuner Dans La Plantation de Café (Cotton peoples reloaded), 2021
Mixed media on paper
195 x 300 cm (total) // 65 x 50 cm (each)

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Pigment, charcoal, acrylic on wood glued to plywood
66 x 56 x 3 cm (each)

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
66 x 56 x 3 cm

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
66 x 56 x 3 cm

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
66 x 56 x 3 cm

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
66 x 56 x 3 cm

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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
66 x 56 x 3 cm

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René Tavares
Preto - Carruagem Lusa , 2022
Stencil, pigment and acrylic on cloth
174 x 154 cm

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René Tavares
Special Request to the Divine River, 2024
Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
190 x 195 cm

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René Tavares
This Land Belongs to Us, 2023
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
175 x 205 cm
Vendu
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René Tavares
Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
70 x 50 cm

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René Tavares
Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
70 x 50 cm

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René Tavares
Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
70 x 50 cm

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René Tavares
Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
70 x 50 cm

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René Tavares
Untitled, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
140 x 110 cm

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