Echoes Across the Atlantic: Building from Loss, an exhibition by Olufèmi Hinson

The Beninese artist Olufèmi Hinson Yovo opens the exhibition Echoes Across the Atlantic at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bahia (MAC_BAHIA) on November 8, at 5 p.m. On view until November 23, the show invites reflection on European colonization through the lens of architectural histories in West Africa and the Americas, with a focus on Salvador. Free admission, from Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

For Olufèmi, while in Africa the collisions between colonial, modern, and traditional aesthetics across the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries resulted in the reconfiguration of locally authored architectures, on the other side of the Atlantic, the clash of colonization produced hybrid vocabularies — visible in indigenous dwellings (Ocas), Portuguese colonial architecture, and Candomblé temples in Salvador.

This hybridism finds renewed urban expressions in the Gulf of Benin, where the Agudás — formerly enslaved Africans who returned from the Americas — contributed to forming landscapes that merge Afro-Brazilian and local African references. At the same time, the religious syncretism of African diasporic populations in the Americas is manifested in the structures of Vodun temples, cathedrals, and mosques.

In Echoes Across the Atlantic, through the installation Cadavre Esquis (Exquisite Corpse), Olufèmi invites the audience to collectively build an archive of memories — an affective cartography connecting Dakar, Ouidah, and Bahia. Through fragments and reconstructions, the installation reclaims architecture as a living archive and as a symbolic structure capable of rebuilding, across the ocean, what was once divided.

The exhibition is part of the activities of Atlantic Threads, a collaborative and interdisciplinary project that fosters artistic and cultural exchanges among contexts marked by colonial legacies and power imbalances. Initiated by Pivô in partnership with the African Artists’ Foundation (Dig Where You Stand) and Cité Internationale des Arts, the project is now in its second phase — the first of which took place in 2025 — featuring participants Gabriela de Matos (Minas Gerais/Brazil), Tiganá Santana (Bahia/Brazil), Anne-Lise Agossa (Abidjan/Côte d’Ivoire), and Olufèmi Hinson Yovo (Cotonou/Benin), with curatorial guidance by Cindy Sissokho and participation by Olivier Marboeuf.

Through the engagement of artists, researchers, and cultural agents, the project contributes to the creation and strengthening of cultural and social ties between Salvador and African and European countries connected by the Atlantic coast.

Echos Across the Atlantic is organized by Atlantic Threads, within the scope of the 2025 France–Brazil Season, with the support of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bahia (MAC_BAHIA), the Institut Français du Bénin, and the Instituto Guimarães Rosa; sponsored by PETROBRAS; and produced by the Instituto Cultural Acrópole, through the Federal Government, Lei de Incentivo à Cultura, and the Ministry of Culture.