We are very pleased to announce our participation in the 2024 edition of Art-o-Rama with a shared  booth between Bombon Projects and Cordova. On this occasion, we present a series of photographic  and mixed media works through a dialogue with artists Agnes Essonti Luque (Barcelona, 1996) and  Mona Varichon (Paris, 1989). 

Agnes Essonti Luque is a Cameroonian and Spanish artist whose work delves into fundamental issues  of identity, culture, and ancestry. Through her work, Essonti explores and challenges the complexities  of cultural belonging and identity using a variety of artistic media, including photography, video, and  performance. These media become tools with which she configures and reconstructs her own memories,  offering an introspective view of her heritage and experiences. 

A Journey (2024) is an installation by Essonti based on a wooden statuette from the collection of the  Ethnological Museum of Catalonia, the result of an invitation by curator Rosa Lleó to participate in the  show Reenchantments, an exhibition that brings together the research of 10 artists on ten pieces from  the collection and proposes a new reading of these works and the possibility of imagining new futures. 

Essonti has chosen a wooden statuette from Central Africa to revisit questions focused on ethnographic  concepts —because ethnography is a fundamentally European science— contrasting them with notions  of ancestry and spirituality from African cosmologies. This statuette, currently in the reserve, is a  protected piece with heritage status and can only be seen in exhibitions. But if, beyond the authenticity  of the object, what interests us is its meaning, it could be presented in a different way, in this case  through a replica. The artist photographed the original statue in the museum and commissioned a  copy from Ibrahima Seydi, a Senegalese artisan living in Barcelona. This replica is “reenchanted” and  travels with the artist to Cameroon, engaging with both place and family and friends. It is captured in a photographic series 

“I have to admit that this object interests me far more for what it was, or could have been, than for what  it is today (a piece of wood, a number, nothing). The only information we have says “ancestor statue”  and tells us about the material it is made of, where it was acquired from, and when. Who was this  ancestor, and what was she like? Does she live on within this object? Did she magically disappear at the  very moment Jordi Sabater i Pi decided that the statue was to be brought to Barcelona’s Ethnographic  Museum? Or did she die slowly, shut away in a storeroom? How did her descendants remember her  when the statue was no longer there? Has anybody been looking for her over all these years?”. —Agnes Essonti Luque 

Deeply influenced by decolonial movements and activism, Essonti’s work addresses themes of self representation, narratives of identity and belonging, and food politics providing a platform for reflection  and dialogue on cultural representation and resistance.  

Esosnti resides and works in Hospitalet de Llobregat. Her academic background includes studies in  Photography in London, a postgraduate degree in Culture and Thought of Black Peoples, and a master’s  degree in Photography. Essonti’s work has been shown in international exhibitions, including 1384 Days  Wide at Rencontres de Bamako 2015, 14th Dakar Biennale OFF and XI Lanzarote Art Biennial. In 2023 she  produced the performance Bayam Sellam, La Bissaperie at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza  and in the MNCARS.

Mona Varichon is a Franco-Egyptian artist and translator based in Paris and New York City who received  her MFA from ArtCenter (Pasadena, US) in 2018. 

The images on display come from Varichon’s ongoing series entitled Free the trappers/Libérez les dealers (2024) which documents billboards advertising marijuana dispensaries after the recent legalization in  California and New York. Varichon’s images shed light on this particular moment in cultural and legal  history and seek to question the language, imagery and intentions of this newly sanctioned industry. 

Her work uses advertisement, social media, popular culture, art history and ‘amateur’ art forms to both  chronicle and comment on our present moment. Her photographs, films and performances archive, pay  homage to, or contextualize major cultural events, as well as intimate experiences that she captures  or puts on display in order to make them shareable. Her pieces circulate on YouTube, in various stores,  mailboxes, interiors, cinemas and art spaces. 

Recent exhibits include Air de Paris and the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the Capc musée d’art  contemporain (Bordeaux, France), the Van Gogh Foundation (Arles, France), the Villa Arson (Nice,  France), Alienze (Vienna, Austria), the Sifang Art Museum Satellite (Shanghai, China), the National  Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic), Cocotte (Treignac, France), and The Vanity Gallery, the Redcat Theatre,  Kristina Kite and The Egyptian Theater (Los Angeles, CA). With the FRAC Lorraine (Metz, France), she  translated the catalogs of artists Pippa Garner, Betye Saar, Christina Ramberg and Cécile B. Evans into  French. She was nominated for the 2024 Ricard Prize by curator Arlène Berceliot-Courtin and will take  part in the Prize’s exhibition in September 2024 at the Fondation Ricard, Paris.