Romuald Hazoumè creates new art for Manchester Museum
19 Feb 2015
‘Dance of the Butterflies’ swarms Living Worlds gallery
‘Dance of the Butterflies’, a stunning new art work by one of Africa’s foremost contemporary artists, Romuald Hazoumè, created for Manchester Museum.
It features swarms of multi-coloured ‘butterflies’ which take over the Museum’s Living Worlds gallery, interacting with the Museum’s own collections.
Hazoumè, whose work was featured in We Face Forward, the Manchester-wide celebration of West African art and culture in 2012, has returned to create this work for Manchester Museum.
The hundreds of butterflies are made from off-cuts of vibrant African wax-print fabrics from the artist’s home country of Benin. Dance of the Butterflies represents a very African take on politics, exploitation and the ‘butterfly effect’- the way in which tiny impulses within chaotic systems can lead to unexpectedly serious effects.
The display – free and open until December 2015 – opened to coincide with the reopening of the Whitworth, following a £15 million redevelopment.
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