The Artist as ‘Chiffonnier': Archival Impulse and Visual Narratives on Everyday Life in Georges Adéagbo

This article aims to situate the work of the Beninese artist Georges Adéagbo within the specific cultural field that defines its legitimacy in the art system. In particular, the article focuses on how the artistic quality of his work is constructed by actants (people, things, words, places and images) that mediate the relationships between the artist and his audience, allowing his site-specific displays, which share the practice of assemblage with the Dahomey sculptural tradition and with the material culture of Vodun, to find a place within a consolidated Western artistic tradition and to be employed as aesthetic and symbolic supports for institutional discourse in various exhibition apparatuses.