Sadikou Oukpedjo at The African Studies Gallery

Sadikou Oukpedjo arrived in Israel in April 2018 to take part in the International Ceramics Symposium at the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery, followed by a residency in Tel Aviv with Africa First. The collaboration, organized by Idit Toledano, curator of The African Studies Gallery, culminated in Palimpsest, a joint exhibition with Israeli artist Sharon Pazner that ran from July 2018 to January 2019.

Oukpedjo trained in the studio of Togolese artist Paul Ahi, specializing in sculpture and drawing while exploring local artistic heritage. He later distanced his work from Togolese traditions, aspiring instead to create a universal epic on the confrontation between Nature and Humanity. Like myth-makers before him, he gave meaning to existential conditions, though his tale remained plotless, with no victors or protagonists.

His recurring motif was the struggle between humans and animals, embodied in hybrid figures—a fish with a human foot, an animal-headed man—that conveyed passion and violence without moral resolution. Refusing to explain his work, he left viewers in a realm of inquiry and ambiguity.

His use of shifting techniques and unfinished forms reinforced a sense of suspended completeness, holding both disorder and possibility. By dissecting the mythic body of African and European traditions, Oukpedjo opened space for renewal and reexamination, where opposites could either harmonize or disrupt.

Meeting Pazner at the symposium, their initial differences—language, scale, temperament—seemed stark. Yet during their residency it became clear these contrasts enabled dialogue and transformation. Each practiced an impossible synthesis: Pazner between ceramics and concrete, Oukpedjo between human and animal.

Their works rejected perfection in favor of ongoing searches for deeper, ancient truths.

View the exhibition at The African Studies Gallery.