Romuald Hazoumè builds his masques bidons from discarded plastic jugs, letting the vessels’ spouts, handles and openings become mouths and noses, then finishes them with feathers, netting and hardened paintbrushes. His new series at October Gallery in London takes its title from Picasso’s Blue Period, a quiet rebuke to the artist who borrowed African masking traditions, and dedicates each face to a woman caught in a tragedy reported in the news. Blue, for Hazoumè, is a counterweight to the red lines of war: a call to recover sympathy for one another. Source: Colossal