In Conversation with Ange-Frédéric Koffi

There’s a sense of motion that runs through Ange-Frédéric Koffi’s work. Movement not just in form, but in spirit. His life has been shaped by travel, by crossing borders and absorbing what each place offers. The result is a practice that feels fluid and borderless, where textiles, photography, and installation merge into something that speaks across cultures.

What stands out is his sensitivity to space. The way light hits a wall, how color breathes in a room, how a simple piece of cloth can change how we move or see. His work carries that quiet awareness, that feeling of presence.

Listening to him, there’s this calm rhythm to his words, a sense of someone who’s always arriving yet always at home. Perhaps that’s what his art captures best. That home isn’t fixed, but found again and again in movement itself.

What kind of stories are you interested in telling?

ANGE The stories I'm drawn to are about movement—literal and metaphorical. I've been in motion since birth, crossing borders, languages, geographies. What interests me is how this constant displacement shapes perception. How do we see differently when we're always arriving somewhere new? My work tries to capture that state of being between places, where identity isn't fixed but constantly renegotiated through encounter.

Does your textile work reference your history of being born in Africa?

ANGE My reference points extend beyond Africa. When I was in Mexico or Japan, those textiles were also very present in my life. Of course, I think for a lot of people, because of the color of my skin, they see my African background, but I think of myself as porous, absorbing the material cultures I encounter. I'm a bit like a sponge. I'm taking materials and trying to create something that speaks to different people. The work isn't about representing one place but about the resonances between them—the way certain gestures with fabric, certain uses of color, appear across cultures in surprisingly similar and different ways.

Have you learned anything about working with cloth, fabric, different kinds of textile materials versus photography?

ANGE My approach has always been double. On one hand I’m rooted first and foremost in industrial production. On the other, as I attended an art school with a textile design program, I was particularly sensitive to issues related to craftsmanship. I therefore had the opportunity to learn how to weave and discover textiles in Mulhouse, France. Each time I was curious about the subject matter, I tried to learn the skill in a theoretical way, but also in a practical way. What I discovered is that textiles and photography share something fundamental: they're both about light, surface, and time. Photography captures light on a surface at a specific moment. Textiles hold light differently—they absorb it, reflect it, change with it throughout the day. Both mediums ask you to think about how materials carry meaning, how they age, how they respond to their environment.

Is there anything that you've seen or learned that you can't get out of your head?

ANGE Just before I started my first bachelor degree in an art school, I went to an exhibition in Bordeaux with German artist Franz Erhard Walther. That exhibition changed something for me. Here was an artist working with textiles but completely concerned with activation, with movement, with how bodies engage with objects in space. Since then,  I've become obsessed with viewing the architecture of museum framework, white walls, the quality of light, the acoustics, the way people move through rooms. A slight change in lighting can completely transform how you read a color. I'm constantly thinking about the choreographies of perception, how people are moving and interacting with the work.

Is there a place that you've visited or lived that still influences your work?

ANGE Yes! The Basel-Mulhouse region continues to shape my thinking. It's this unique zone where Switzerland, France, and Germany meet—three languages, three systems, three approaches to art and technology and science. I lived there and I came back to very often. Something about that border condition, that productive friction between different ways of organizing life and culture, resonates with how I think about my own practice.

Is there a ritual that you practice, no matter where you are?

ANGE Yes, I have my toilet bag. When I arrive, I need to unpack it completely, arrange everything in the bathroom. Only then do I feel settled, like I can say, okay, I'm home. Maybe it's about establishing a private territory, a familiar order in unfamiliar space. Or maybe it's just about the ritual itself—the repetition that anchors you across different places? I notice if I'm moving for a month or for five days, I still need it to feel like home. It's interesting how such a small gesture creates that sense of belonging.

If you could show your work anywhere in the world, where would it be?

ANGE The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. It's a circle museum. I love the architecture, but also the challenge it would pose—thinking about how to conceive an exhibition in that particular space. I love the city of Kanazawa and how the building is engaging with the town. I've never shown in the U.S., but the other space I dream about is the Renaissance Society in Chicago. There's something compelling about that venue—it occupies a former chapel, so there's this history of contemplative space, of architecture designed for a certain kind of attention. 

Images courtesy of the artist.

In The Neighborhood With Ange

HAVE A COFFEE Dan‘s LAB Coffee 
WORTH A VISIT Kunsthalle Basel — March 2024 marked a new chapter with the appointment of director Mohamed Almusibli
TO FEAST I love to eat at the restaurant on the river side of Hotel Krafft Basel
FOR MODERN THEATRE La Filature, the national theater 
GO TO THIS Mulhouse Photo Biennale — They invited me for the second time to curate a show for next May (2026)