ADRIEN SAUVAGE

My mission is to promote the freedom of humanity throughout the world and make opportunity universal, by raising the group esteem through the kindness of light, love, and unity. – Adrien Sauvage.

On view from December 10, 2021 – January 30, 2022, Adrien Sauvage’s series titled I AM. showcases layers of merging cultures and aesthetics, expressed through the raw and vulnerable visual storytelling of authentic African narratives, capturing the carefree spirit and strength of modern Ghanaian life.

A fashion designer, costumier, and filmmaker, Sauvage’s artistic oeuvre include a native pictorial series he established in Accra, Ghana in the mid-2000s. In his inaugural solo exhibition titled, I AM, Ghana’s rich social construct and attitudes will come to life in photography and film. I AM, provides an arbitrary peep hole into people and routines that inform the Ghanaian sensitivity, woven into the country’s cultural fabric.

The black and white documentary-style visuals, forge empowering sensibilities, navigating identity and difference through the playful and mundane. In retrospect, the innovative display of light, framing and composition are reminiscent of the acclaimed and iconic Ghanaian photographer, James Barnor, a mentor of Sauvage. Barnor’s photography spanned six decades, producing a trove of archival material documented through time. Like Barnor, Sauvage’s documentation of contemporary everyday life across Ghana depict warmth and familiarity, expressed through vivid and inspiring storytelling that captures and forever captures these fleeting moments.

I AM is an invitation from Sauvage to celebrate and highlight the African global consciousness and reconnect the diasporan community to Africa through an ancestral and spiritual homecoming narrative.