Head with Red Scarifications

Head with Red Scarifications

Faceless Head No.74
  • Dimensions: 34 × 23 cm
  • Materials: Terracotta, red pigments
  • Year: 2015
  • Availability: Unique piece
  • Price: Upon request
Artistic Statement of the Head

This head is engraved with incised lines filled with red pigments, evoking ritual scarifications. The facial features are barely visible, dissolved in the rough clay, yet the deep marks create an alternative cartography of identity. The mouth, reduced to a simple incision, contrasts with the richness of the signs.

Artistic Statement of the Collection

Within 100 Faceless Heads, this piece emphasizes the idea of bodily markings as carriers of history. Scarifications, often tied to belonging, rites of passage, or memory, replace individuality here.

Symbolism

The red lines symbolize pain, memory, and community ties. They remind us that identity can be inscribed into flesh or matter, persisting beyond facial traits.

The “100 Faceless Heads” Collection

A sculpted memory, a universal story

The “100 Faceless Heads” collection brings together one hundred unique sculptures, hand-shaped in terracotta and rusted metal. These works embody the invisible faces of our collective history: undocumented migrants drowned at sea, victims of slavery, the forgotten of genocides, the nameless whose memories fade away.

Each of these heads, deliberately devoid of features, symbolizes a life, a past, a suspended story. 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 calls on us to recognize these erased lives and to rebuild bridges between past and future. “I raise a glass to the undocumented who perish in seas and deserts, I denounce the macabre thunder of cannons and wars…” he declares, expressing the emotional and political power of this work.

“100 Faceless Heads” is far more than an art collection: it is a sculptural photo library, a call to memory, to dialogue, and to a deeper 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.

Comme un poisson dans l’eau, exposition environnementale

2016
|
Lomé, Togo

Les Géants se lèvent, l’Afrique avance

2012
|
Lomé, Togo

Ce Rouge qui m’appartient

2000
|
Lomé, Togo