In his work for Touched, Meschac Gaba creates a souvenir shop with a twist. Unlike the tourist stands found at airports and train stations, Souvenir Palace displays regular souvenir trinkets alongside the accumulated detritus of everyday life: union jack flags and key rings with old soccer balls, doors, windows and shoes. This diversity is matched by a corresponding variety of national identities: the entire store and each object on display is painted in the colours of a different national flag.(http://www.biennial.com/content/LiverpoolBiennial2008/International10Touched/Participate.aspx)
Meschac Gaba was born in 1961 in Cotonou, Benin. He studied at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1996-7, and currently lives in Rotterdam. It was at the Rijksmuseum, Leiden, in 1997 that Gaba inaugurated his major work, the Museum of Contemporary African Art, a project in which the artist installed 12 'rooms' of a nomadic museum in various institutions over a period of five years, culminating with his presentation of a 'Humanist Space' at Documenta 11. Other 'rooms' include the Museum Restaurant (shown at W139, Amsterdam, in 1999), the Games Room (shown in Besançon, France, in 1999 and in Brussels and Gent in 2000), the Library of the Museum (Witte de With, 2001, and published in book form, also 2001), and the Salon (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2002). For more on this work, see www.museumofcontemporaryafricanart.com. His Tresses series has showed at inIVA in London (2006) and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2005). See www.gabatresses.org. Other recent solo shows include Glue Me Peace at the Nobel Peace Center, Oslo (2006), and Tate Modern, London (2005). Recent group shows include Gaba's curatorial project Glück - Welches Glück, at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, Germany (2008); Port City at Greenland Street Gallery, Liverpool (2008); Africa Remix (2004-2007) and, in 2006, the São Paolo, Gwangju, Sydney and Havana biennales. (http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/artists/gaba.htm)
