Waste Land

Pieter Hugo will be in Rome on November 30 (6pm local time) to hold a lecture at MAXXI - National Museum of the 21st Century Art ahead of the opening of an exhibition of his latest work, Permanent Error, a series of portraits and landscapes taken in a dump site of e-waste near the slum of Agbogbloshie, in Ghana.


Like a dark mirror of our daily life and all our beloved technological extensions, this work shows us a ground zero of dry land and clouds of smoke, filled by creatures that could come from Hugo's previous work about Nigeria's fim industry, Nollywood - except they're not. This time they are real people, and what is unreal is the fact that they are in that place, covered with all those rusted and alien objects, while toxic smoke rises up the sky, and some cows inexplicably manage to stroll around peacefully or lie on the ground asleep, maybe dreaming of a different world.

Permanent Error will be at MAXXI from December 1st, 2011, to April 29, 2012.


All images taken from Permanent Error © Pieter Hugo