Tête à la crête fragile

Tête à la crête fragile

Head Without a Face No. 24

  • Dimensions: 33 × 18 cm
  • Materials: Terracotta, plant fibers
  • Year: 2015
  • Availability: Unique piece
  • Price: Upon request

Artistic Description of the Head
This head features a crest made of plant fibers, evoking a rebellious or distinctive hairstyle. The hollowed-out circular eyes appear empty, giving the impression of a mask or totem. The rudimentary, engraved features emphasize the fragility of the expression.

Artistic Description of the Collection
In 100 Heads Without Faces, this work questions social and cultural appearances. Here, the hairstyle becomes a sign of individual affirmation, but on a face that remains generic and uncertain.

Symbolism
The fragile crest, erected at the top, can symbolize both the pride and the precariousness of contemporary identities. It suggests that any personal construction—such as an ostentatious hairstyle—rests on a vulnerable material: earth.

The “100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” Collection

A Sculpted Memory, a Universal Story

The “100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” collection brings together one hundred unique sculptures, handcrafted from terracotta and rusted metal. These works embody the invisible faces of our collective history: undocumented migrants drowned at sea, victims of slavery, those forgotten in genocides, the anonymous whose memories are fading.

Each of these heads, deliberately devoid of features, symbolizes a life, a past, a story suspended in time. Faceless, they become the silent bearers of individual and collective memories, inviting us to reflect on our shared humanity.

A Committed and Universal Message

Through this series, the artist invites us to acknowledge these erased lives and to rebuild bridges between the past and the future. “I open the graves of the undocumented migrants who drown in the seas and in the deserts, I denounce the macabre sounds of the cannons of war…”, he affirms, thus expressing the emotional and political power of this work.

“100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” is much more than an art collection: it is a sculptural archive, a call to remembrance, to dialogue, and to a better understanding of our common roots.

Gustave Akpéhou DJONDA

Self-taught Visual Artist

Passionate about collective memory and questions of identity, the artist works with clay and metal to give form to what is often invisible or forgotten. Through the series “100 Heads Without Faces,” he offers a space for reflection and dialogue on the wounds of the past and the hopes for a more just future.

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