A COIN IS A COIN
Ndayé Kouagou

"A coin is a coin" (2022) deals with the many dualisms in life and the politics of possibilities that often don't sound reassuring. It offers a warning in the economy of presence, relentlessly demanding that we still can decide. In an era of living that we are never being good enough and too many options, the video suggests that there could be more to it than a standstill. In the video work, a character moves into a studio, the unconcealed tripods and backgrounds point to a dissolution of boundaries: between what’s on stage and behind the scenes, inner and societal, truthful and constructed. By creating a non-binary double of himself and remixing visual and cultural traits Kouagou moves through various linguistic and aesthetic codes, showing how he can be one and many.

Exploring concepts of freedom, legitimacy, choice, and privilege as defining conditions, conundrums and contradictions are typical in his performances, paintings and sculptures. Always based on texts of which he is the author, these poetic and humorous narratives change course when confronted by a system that claims order and binaries. Kougou embraces a parafictional persona where self and character merge into multiplicity in its existence, by morphing and shapeshifting. A coin is just a coin—but it’s also a catalyst for conversation. Change is action but also a tool, a metaphor for switching viewpoints.