For this year’s Gallery Weekend, Galerie Barbara Thumm presents “Spleen,” an exhibition featuring a striking series of paintings by Roméo Mivekannin (*1986, Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire). Known for his unique reinterpretations of canonical European artworks, Mivekannin draws upon a vast colonial visual archive—from 18th- to 19th-century Orientalist paintings to early colonial photography—to interrogate and subvert historical representations of otherness, power, and desire.
Mivekannin’s second solo show at Galerie Barbara Thumm revisits the history of Orientalism with a bold intervention in the original paintings that he uses for inspiration. Presented as free-hanging canvases, his paintings do not merely reference the Orientalist tradition; they irritate it. In a subversive act, which Mivekannin refers to as “visual irritation”, he reinterprets the original paintings or photographs and replaces the subjects’ faces with his own black- and-white portrait, looking directly at the viewer. This direct gaze transforms the viewers into active participants and reclaims agency for the figures once rendered as dominated subjects, exposing the power dynamics embedded within the works. His approach, rooted in an act of critical reappropriation, turns Orientalism onto itself to reconsider its legacy in a contemporary context, as part of a collective healing process. His canvases, crafted from old bedsheets and infused with elixir baths inspired by voodoo rituals from Benin (where Mivekannin’s family is from), carry profound spiritual and ancestral resonance.
In his seminal book “Orientalism,” (1978) Edward Said conceptualized the term as a European invention in which the West (particularly France and Britain) created an imaginary vision and understanding of the “Orient” shaped by a discourse of power and domination. Artists, writers, and academics fabricated an image of this “Orient” and its inhabitants that was both romanticized and objectified, reducing diverse cultures and realities to a set of stereotypes that often served colonial ideologies. The notions of fabrication and invention are key in Orientalism; The term “armchair orientalists” referred to the many scholars or writers who never traveled to the places they wrote about but, instead, created their works describing remote lands based on the accounts of others and their own imagination. The same happened with many Orientalist artists who did not leave their studios in Paris or elsewhere in Europe and from there painted a myriad of scenes using photographs, textiles, and literature as inspiration. Even though some of these artists or writers indeed traveled to places like Constantinople, Algeria, or the Levant, even settling there at some point, many of them used the garments and objects collected on their travels as props to shape their paintings from their studios. In some cases, they even used European models, especially considering that it was unlikely that male painters were allowed to enter the very intimate spaces they portrayed in their works that included nude women.
In “Spleen” Mivekannin reexamines the works of European painters like Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean-Étienne Liotard, and Édouard Debat-Ponsan, among others, who depicted the “Orient” through highly theatricalized scenes—harems, hammams, and other imagined settings—portraying women and subjects as eroticized objects of desire or symbols of subjugation. Much of these scenes present a supposed depiction of everyday life and others focus on domestic settings, with a strong emphasis on female nude subjects in intimate spaces on the latter. By engaging in an act of “citation” or “visual referencing,” Mivekannin meticulously reinterprets the ornate details of the original paintings, including their references to Islamic architecture, geometric patterns, floral motifs, and sumptuous textiles, and also includes the figures depicted in the scenes (mostly female). His titles always bear the term “After”, followed by the original artist’s name and the work’s title, emphasizing the inspiration for Mivekannin’s paintings but also making it clear that it “follows” the original and is not the same. For instance, in “After Debat-Ponsan, Le massage,” Mivekannin recreates a very intimate scene of a hammam in which a white woman lies on her front, while a black woman massages her arm. The scene portrays an implicit power relation with the black woman as the servant to the white one, further reinforcing colonial imaginary. Both female figures are completely and partially nude, adding an element of voyeurism to the scene from the male gaze, especially in a setting where men were not allowed.
Photography also played a key role in expanding Orientalist imagery, offering a new medium through which exoticized representations could be staged and consumed. In European studios, photographers carefully orchestrated scenes featuring women dressed in elaborate “Oriental” garments—or posing nude—against backdrops adorned with textiles, artifacts, and decorative objects. These images, like Orientalist paintings, fabricated an idealized and eroticized vision of the East, rather than being ethnographic documentation of local realities. Mivekannin draws from these photographic archives, translating their staged compositions onto his canvases. By doing so, he highlights the constructed nature of these images, exposing Orientalism as not just an artistic movement but a malleable fiction—one that could be assembled, staged, and arranged like a theater set.
Mivekannin chose the term “spleen” as the show’s title because of its historical and symbolic resonance. While originally referring to a vital organ, the word has carried deep cultural meanings over time. In the 17th and 18th centuries, “spleen” became associated with an illness linked to melancholy and bad humor, particularly among the upper classes in England and France, often connected to hypochondriasis or hysteria. In France, it evolved into a broader concept of profound melancholy, later immortalized by Charles Baudelaire in his posthumously published collection “Le Spleen de Paris” (1869), making it a powerful literary and cultural symbol of the time. Baudelaire’s work emerged at the height of Orientalism in France, a time of colonial expansion and intense fascination with the so-called exotic East. His poems reflect a yearning for the unknown, a desire to escape, and vivid imagery of the “Orient,” contributing to the fantasy and constructed aesthetic of Orientalism. In addition, Mivekannin takes inspiration from Jeanne Duval (Haitian actress and dancer), who was Baudelaire’s muse and inspired his work “Les Fleurs du mal.” He takes her portrait to explore the relationship between author/painter and muse/model and notions of alterity in Orientalism. With “Spleen” as his title, Mivekannin bridges these literary and artistic influences, exploring the intersection between melancholy, escapism, and the imagined “Orient” in his work.
Roméo Mivekannin studied Art History and Architecture and is now pursuing a Doctorate at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Montpellier, France. He has been part of exhibitions worldwide at the Collezione Maramotti (Italy, 2025), Musée du Louvre Lens (France, 2024, 2025), Bozar Center for Fine Arts (Belgium, 2025), Kunstmuseum Basel (Switzerland, 2024), Galerie Barbara Thumm (Germany, 2024), Völklinger Hütte (Germany, 2024), the Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirated, 2023), Zeitz Mocaa (South Africa, 2023), Musée du Quai Branly (France, 2023), the Dakar Biennale (Senegal, 2022), among others. His works are in various collections, including Cité de la Musique, Musée National du Quai Branly, Collection Leridon, Sharjah Foundation, Fondation Zeitz, and Galerie Nationale d’art contemporain du Bénin. He lives and works between Toulouse, France, and Cotonou, Benin.
Text by: Susana Turbay Botero
