Orientalisme

The publication Roméo Mivekannin: Orientalism brings together a series of works created between 2022 and 2025, accompanied by a critical essay by researcher Gil Z. Hochberg. In this essay, Hochberg analyzes Mivekannin's research, which revisits 18th- and 19th-century European Orientalist paintings. By faithfully reproducing these works while inserting his own face and altering their settings, Mivekannin reveals the fantastical, racist, and sexist dimensions of colonial Orientalism. His artistic gesture, both playful and critical, transforms the colonial archive into a space for healing, subversion, and reclaiming our gaze, inviting the viewer to reconsider these images that still resonate in our contemporary imagination.

Roméo Mivekannin is a contemporary artist who lives and works between Toulouse and Cotonou. Through visual and conceptual means, he seeks to challenge the power dynamics that persist in our collective representations and to reclaim certain stolen memories.

Gil Z. Hochberg is the Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies, Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern studies south Asian studies and African studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University New York.Professor Hochberg’s research focuses on the relationship between politics and aesthetics. Her main interest centers on questions of representation and power, particularly in the context of colonialism, orientalism, and nationalism, with a concentration on Palestine, Israel, Zionism as well as a broader interest in (post)colonial South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.