The Radiant Baby was created in New York, exhibited all over the world and for two months was Beninese!

 

 

    "Keith Haring in Cotonou

November 14, 2016 - January 7, 2017

 

 

Thanks to the incredible generosity and renewed trust of Enrico Navarra, who loaned the Fondation Zinsou the entirety of the works (35 works) in this exhibition, the Fondation Zinsou celebrated Keith Haring, at his most joyful, iconoclastic and universal.

 

By presenting the work of this Pop art icon in Cotonou, whose joyful, colorful, irreverent work is almost childlike in appearance, the Fondation Zinsou wished to pay homage to the artist's philosophy of "Art for All", by adding new perspectives to the work, proposing new definitions of each canvas, keeping the work alive in the eyes of a public that doesn't yet know it but will recognize itself in it.

"Keith Haring in Cotonou" is based on the diary of this world-renowned artist.

This diary becomes the guiding line, the line common to all Keith Haring's work, the line he has always honed, the line that defines the outline of the work, the characters, the solids and voids, the line that links each painting, each space, each statement. The line that creates the absolute purity of Radiant Baby - or that makes the sound of a ghetto blaster or a barking dog - is also the line that outlines the threats to society: nuclear power, the loss of individuality and identity to mass culture, the rise of machines and computers that threaten to take control, AIDS - a disease we discover through the many deaths that litter the '80s.

 

Accompanied by Keith Haring, visitors can discover his works through his words and reflections - a veritable voyage of initiation - to better grasp his pure, unadulterated message, which he wanted to be accessible to as many people as possible and free of any interpretation.