La Galerie Barbara Thumm in collaboration with Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, is pleased to present Atlas, a project by artist Roméo Mivekannin, on the occasion of Art Basel Unlimited, taking place from June 19 to 22, 2026.
Atlas is an installation project that Roméo Mivekannin has been developing over several years. Interested in the legacy of iconic buildings in Europe and the United States—such as the Grand Palais in Paris, the Crystal Palace in New York, and the Tervuren Museum in Brussels—Roméo Mivekannin methodically dissects these architectural structures, preserving only the primary framework of the buildings. The artist presents, suspended in space, the wrought iron skeletons of these constructions—raw and stripped of embellishment—deprived of the emblems of luxury and power that once made them so renowned and which still render them popular tourist destinations in today’s major cities.
Roméo Mivekannin specifically selects buildings whose architecture and history are linked to the colonial period. These structures were once used to showcase the might of colonial ideology and power—for instance, by hosting human zoos or displaying looted objects and artworks from colonial campaigns. The collections that were built in these spaces—some of which are now being reevaluated—bear witness to the logic of appropriation and domination that was at work between colonizing and colonized countries.
In Mivekannin’s installation, the architectural models are scaled down. Their suspension at various heights challenges the viewer’s gaze, inviting new perspectives on these familiar silhouettes, as if to defuse the direct confrontation and the inherent power dynamics associated with the original buildings.
The shadows cast by their jagged forms contribute to an ominous atmosphere, evoking a ghostly presence that is central to the artist’s work, particularly in his paintings where his own portrait haunts historical imagery. As is often the case in his practice, Roméo Mivekannin approaches his subject with a bitter touch of irony. The iron cages—made of a material highly symbolic and evocative of domination—are forged in Côte d’Ivoire, thereby reversing the roles in the narrative of history-making.
The object of the powerful here becomes the instrument of the colonized. Finally, the aviary, a decorative feature in 19th-century bourgeois homes where rare and exotic species were kept, is still used today in West Africa by “wish-makers.” In exchange for a small sum, they release a bird believed to carry the realization of your wish. Yet, carefully trained, the birds always return to their cages…
The installation thus acts as a poetic and somber meditation on the mechanisms of a centuries-old system of domination.
