Hako Hankson Returns to Casablanca with “Présences immémoriales”

The Cameroonian painter brings a new body of work to L’Atelier 21, weaving myth, memory, and the universal language of portraiture into one of the season’s most compelling exhibitions.

There are artists who document the world, and then there are artists who inhabit it on an entirely different frequency. Hako Hankson belongs firmly to the second category. Born in 1968 in Bafang, Cameroon, the self-taught painter has spent decades translating the visual codes of his origins into a contemporary language that speaks far beyond the borders of his homeland. This June, he returns to Casablanca for a second solo exhibition at the prestigious gallery L’Atelier 21, presenting Présences immémoriales, a new series conceived during his residency in the city.

The show runs from June 9 to July 13, 2026, with a vernissage on Tuesday, June 9 at 7 p.m.

A Painter Who Asks the Right Questions

The title alone sets the tone. Présences immémoriales, or “immemorial presences,” suggests something ancient and persistent, forms and figures that endure not because they were preserved, but because they were never fully absent. It is a fitting frame for a body of work that engages, without sentimentality, with the tensions defining our current moment. Hankson does not paint as a journalist or an activist. His concerns are deeper, more patient. He uses painting to interrogate what it means to carry culture, memory, and identity inside a world in constant disruption.

The portrait remains his dominant form. But in this new series, the portrait expands, absorbing narrative, epic scale, and mythic resonance. Figures emerge from a visual vocabulary rooted in the ritual objects of his upbringing, masks, sacred statuary, totemic forms, and are simultaneously in conversation with an art history that has always crossed borders. Writer Olivier Rachet, who contributed the catalogue essay, draws a line connecting Hankson’s work to Picasso’s cubist portraits, themselves shaped by an early fascination with African art. It is a lineage the painter inhabits with full awareness, neither deferential nor combative, simply present.

Casablanca as Creative Ground

What makes this exhibition particularly resonant is its origin. The works in Présences immémoriales were conceived in Casablanca, during a residency that clearly left its mark. Rachet describes the Moroccan context of Hankson’s production as “fraternal,” and it is a word that carries weight. There is a closeness between the visual cultures of West and North Africa that academic frameworks often miss, and Hankson’s painting navigates that proximity with instinct and intelligence.

His work, Rachet notes, refuses to be read as ethnographic document. It is, instead, something more urgent: a painting practice that draws simultaneously on deep cultural roots and the raw immediacy of urban expression. The influence of graffiti and street art surfaces in the speed and confidence of his execution. Lines land with the decisiveness of someone who knows exactly what they want to say.

A Career Built on Presence

Hako Hankson, born Gaston Hako, grew up surrounded by the ceremonial objects of his tribe in western Cameroon. His father was a sculptor. The visual language of ritual was not something he discovered later in life; it was the air he breathed from childhood. He emerged onto the international art scene in the 1990s and has since shown widely across the globe.

His work has entered some of the most significant collections in the world, including those of the World Bank in Cameroon, the Fondation Donwahi in Côte d’Ivoire, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in France, the Fondation H in Madagascar, and the Gervanne & Matthias Leridon Collection. He continues to live and work in Douala.

This return to L’Atelier 21, a gallery that has established itself as one of Casablanca’s most important platforms for contemporary art, feels right. Présences immémoriales is not an easy exhibition. It demands something from the viewer: attention, openness, a willingness to sit with images that do not resolve quickly. But that is precisely what makes it worth the visit.

Présences immémoriales, Hako Hankson June 9 to July 13, 2026 L’Atelier 21, 21 rue Abou Mahassine Arrouyani, Casablanca Vernissage: Tuesday, June 9, 2026, from 7 p.m. Open Monday to Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. www.latelier21.ma