African English Pavilion / Jardin botanique de Johannesburg

If there is a recurrent trait in the work of Trevor Gould, it is very much the presentation of a place invested with an overflowing theatricality so that disconcerting strategies and common symbols are found to conceal the image of the self and that of the our culture. Poser pour Ie public established the indisputable relationship between the devices used for presenting exhibitions in museological institutions and all kinds of guided tours produced for tourists. By hijacking the figure of the guide and encouraging us to reproduce the same thing infinitely, to the framing ad nauseam of postcard clichés, the artist makes himself a guide to unexpected ways of seeing. Language, painting, sculpture, and architecture are the many vectors where the habitus of perception is found, dismissed, and confounded, making a fetish of the cultural artefact and the site visited. This is so that the inescapable uncertainty that strains the connection when one speaks and perceives can be taken into account. The contingency and the concreteness of this place demands a constant reconfiguration of images that haunt and take root.