Benjamin Deguenon (1982) is an autodidact artist from Benin, who received his artistic formation through his 5-year apprenticeship with the well recognized  Beninese artist Dominic Zinkpé and various other trainings through ESMA and international residencies. 

His world is populated with extravagant creatures with beaks, claws, talons, tails, straight out of the flute of an urban Pan, chimeras stemming from a personal mythology which he removes from the street, from the city, from life. Quartered without disenchantment between before and now, it draws as one spreads its wings, from above, sweeping the landscape from the heights to get an overview. In his sculptures and installations, Deguenon recuperates and recovers from everyday life to sew up his investigations, from his childhood to invent an urban mythology. Not only recovers materials, techniques, the idea of communion between man and nature, he recovers his anxieties from the intimate to deliver those of others, in fact a pantheon of unrealities, in wood, adorned with iron, adorned with fabrics, installations-exorcisms that expose him.

His beautiful energy, the projection of a fury to exist in a mutant society where the sacred withers away and where individuals get lost, is channeled into the drawings that extend his approach on a more fragile medium, with more sensitive tools. In his latest series of paintings, Deguenon cuts back to a minimalistic colour palette, enforcing the power of his imagery.

Deguenon recently ventured into ceramics, culminating in his solo exhibition 'le traversé' at Galerie Vallois in Paris. As a child in Abomey, Benjamin delighted in crafting flat sculptures from laterite—the region’s distinctive red soil. Years later these early memories and sensations resurfaced. For him, working with clay became not only a reconnection with his origins but also a deeply philosophical journey: “It is the earth that carries us, it is the earth that nourishes us, it is everything to us. And in the end, we return to the earth. If I came to ceramics, it is to pay homage to this Earth that carries us.”

Deguenon has participated in many group and solo exhibitions in Benin, Senegal, Togo and France. His works can be found in several international collections and publications on Beninese art.