ABOUT THE ARTIST

FLORENT HOUESSOU

Visual Artist · Textile Collage · Mixed Media
Cotonou, Benin

Florent Houessou is a Beninese visual artist whose practice explores memory, identity, childhood, collective experience and cultural transmission through textile collage and mixed-media assemblage.

Based in Cotonou, Benin, Houessou works primarily with fragments of African fabrics, recycled plastic sachets, textiles and other discarded materials collected from his everyday environment. Through cutting, layering, assembling and recomposing these materials, he transforms overlooked fragments into contemporary visual narratives.

At the heart of his practice is the fragment. A piece of fabric can carry traces of a family history, a cultural identity, a childhood memory or a shared experience. By bringing these fragments together, Houessou creates compositions in which individual memories intersect with broader questions of belonging, resilience and contemporary African life.

His recurring interest in childhood and the human figure reflects a desire to revisit moments of play, freedom and vulnerability while considering how these experiences shape identity. The bodies represented in his works often appear in states of movement, tension or suspension, suggesting both the constraints of the present and the possibility of a different future.

The use of discarded materials is equally significant. Rather than treating waste as something without value, Houessou repositions it as a material capable of carrying memory and meaning. This process of transformation connects his artistic practice to questions of sustainability, resourcefulness and resilience.

His work has been presented in exhibitions and artistic programs in Benin and the wider West African region, including exhibitions in Cotonou, Porto-Novo and Lomé, as well as a creative recycling residency in Ouidah.

Through textile, collage and assemblage, Florent Houessou continues to develop a visual language rooted in his environment while engaging with universal questions of memory, identity, transformation and human connection.

EDUCATION

National Center for Arts and Crafts — Cotonou, Benin
Fine Arts, 2010–2014

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Art Teacher — Secondary School, Cotonou, Benin
Since 2022

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & PROGRAMS

2026 — Resilience, CCC, Cotonou, Benin
2025 — Fragments of Childhood, Cotonou, Benin
2024 — Textile Memory, French Institute of Cotonou, Benin
2024 — Recycled Identities, Lomé, Togo
2024 — Creative Recycling Art Residency, Ouidah, Benin
2023 — Young Artists Exhibition, Porto-Novo, Benin

ARTIST PROFILE

Mediums: Textile collage, mixed media, assemblage
Materials: African fabrics, recycled plastics, found and discarded materials
Themes: Memory, identity, childhood, cultural transmission, resilience, sustainability
Based in: Cotonou, Benin