At Collezione Maramotti, Ndayé Kouagou Turns Language into a Trap

In Reggio Emilia, late spring announces itself through Fotografia Europea. The city quickly resembles a loosened shutter. Passersby thread the arcades with vintage cameras and weird gadgets hanging from their necks. This year, the festival title is Ghosts of the Moment, a formulation that suits photography well. Yet the picture that lodged in my mind was not a spectral sight. It was a poster set against red. A man wore a dog mask. Below it, a tank top bore “Masallah” above GmbH trousers. It was direct and wry, with a slight threat. It advertised Heaven’s truth, Ndayé Kouagou’s first solo exhibition in Italy.

The show unfolds at Collezione Maramotti, inside the former Max Mara factory on Via Fratelli Cervi 66. The fashion house relocated to new headquarters in 2003. The original plant was then adapted by British architect Andrew Hapgood to host the contemporary art collection initiated by Achille Maramotti. The building remains tied to labour. Its raw surfaces resist easy polish and retain an old industrial charge. Concrete meets pale stone. Glass admits measured daylight. Nothing registers as overdesigned. That restraint offers Kouagou latitude.

Before entering the venue, the public gathered in a large hall for Please don’t be, a performance with Salber Lee Williams. Kouagou directed us where to stand. Williams sat at a desk. The dialogue settled around a casual discussion on a project made with AI tools and the way algorithms filter speech. Then coloured cards came out of a box. Each carried shards of text. Kouagou and Williams arranged them, added words, subtracted terms and invited us to judge. Some combinations read clearly. A few slipped into the absurd. The question was simple, but not innocent. Who decides when language makes sense?

At one point Kouagou said, “If you feel extraordinary, step on this side of the room.” Then he asked, “Are you sure about it?” The atmosphere changed. Guests hesitated, then crossed back laughing. After several attempts, a common message emerged: “PLEASE BE YOURSELF.” It could have been a motivational slogan. Here, its ambiguity sharpened. The demand mixed kindness with coercion. That tension permeates the whole path.

Sara Piccinini, director of Collezione Maramotti, explained at the entrance that the family had acquired works by Kouagou and sought the right occasion to present them. In conversation with the institution, he developed a new commission inspired by photo comics and by the relation between text and visual storytelling. The project will travel onward. A further iteration debuts at Heidelberger Kunstverein in September 2026, while selected pieces will also appear at the 18th Biennale de Lyon the same month.

Heaven’s truth occupies the opening sequence and anchors the exhibition’s main structure. It brings together a three-chapter video with cut-out figures and associated wall pieces. The installation takes on a staged quality without growing heavy. Free-standing printed bodies wait like props about to move. The central figure is Pochi, a dog drawn from a performance Kouagou has presented many times. During the tour, he said he wanted to give those characters “durational life” by turning them into sculptures. He outlined a story of rejection, but the screen interrupted him. Its written cue told us to continue to the next chamber.

The interruption mattered. Kouagou often adopts a generous stance, calmly steering us ahead. Yet this courtesy also controls pace and attention. In Chapter 2, the narrative darkens. A character with the artist’s body and a female voice dies after a brief existence. One scene depicts him hit by a car. A second finds him already dead. Adjacent boards display phrases such as “Revenge is a dish best served cold” and “Sometimes fun is not for everyone.” Chapter 3 tests whether Pochi can access Heaven. Judgment arrives not as sacred drama, but as a bureaucratic procedure.

Kouagou called the show “a big game.” Visitors pass through ordered sections according to prescribed prompts. He positions himself as an artist holding your hand, not because he underestimates your intelligence, but since he is “a nice person.” The line lands with a tender, manipulative force. After that softness, Here & Elsewhere jolts the mood. The 2024 video alternates fictional live news reports with strange lectures delivered by a modern-day aidos. A huge “CRISIS” sign presses on the wall. Advice suddenly becomes theatre. Certainty looks suspicious.

Then the tempo drops. In previous spaces, the woman’s timbre had filled my head with Kouagou’s script. Here, those pieces made me hear my own. I absorbed it silently, but the wording gained a private tone. The gap between author and reader thinned. It recalled that initial action, where placards formed meaning through placement and erasure. Kouagou proposes reflection, but he does not seal it. Interpretation contracts, assembled from fragments that can always be shifted. That lent the passage an intimate pull without locking itself shut. It leaves no doctrine behind, only a residual unease, still humming at the edge.

The last gallery presents the film A coin is a coin, from 2022. In it, Kouagou performs an allegorical monologue that starts with the two sides of a coin and veers toward power and freedom. The artist loves the work for preserving memories from a beautiful period. Every panel excerpt comes from this video. At the close, they linger like debris from a spoken world.

I retraced the route before departing. One phrase stayed with me. It mocked the wish to connect everything in a tangible way and claimed that reality follows another logic, best described as chaotic. That sentence sits near the core of Kouagou’s practice. His work begins with language, but refuses to make it stable. It recasts statements as traps and doubt as form. Heaven’s truth is playful, but not light. It frames truth under pressure, and authority in social exchange. At Collezione Maramotti, the ghost is not only an image. It is a voice changing shape.



Ndayé Kouagou’s Heaven’s truth is on view until 26 July 2026, in conjunction with Fotografia Europea.



Feature image: Ndayé Kouagou, Heaven’s truth, 2026. Exhibition view. © Ndayé Kouagou. Photo: Dario Lasagni