Artistic description of the artwork: This monumental sculpture, crafted from charred wood bound with metallic rings, depicts a seated figure whose body appears both constrained and firmly grounded. The traces of burning and cracks in the wood evoke scars left by time, fire, and history. The rings encircling the torso and legs suggest both bondage and protection, while the verticality of the seat reinforces the work’s hieratic aura. The sculpture emerges as a meditation on memory and resilience, where wounded matter becomes a force of reinvention.
Artistic description of the series: This work belongs to a series in which Kodjovi Joey TESSI explores the visible and invisible scars inscribed in contemporary African memory. Wood—living yet fragile—is here burned, split, incised, then bound with metal and color to reveal a language of pain and transmission. The red lines, cracks, and markings recall ritual scarifications, while situating these forms within a refined contemporary aesthetic. These works question the persistence of collective and intimate wounds, as well as the capacity of bodies and memories to resist, to heal, and to transform.
His preferred medium is wood, which he combines with metal, wire, and color. Through radical gestures—splitting, burning, incising, and binding—he reveals the material’s buried memory. His sculpted heads, both archaic and futuristic, bear the marks of intimate and collective wounds, while asserting a force of resilience and repair.
The red lines, metal rings, and incisions recall both ritual scarification and a secret writing, somewhere between pain and transmission. The natural cracks in the wood reinforce the idea of a living material, resistant to fire, time, and pressure.
By combining the raw strength of traditional African sculpture with a refined contemporary aesthetic, Kodjovi Tessi constructs a powerful and timeless body of work. It questions the permanence of the visible and invisible marks—social, cultural, and spiritual—that shape the human being.
