Tayou's research focuses on the urban environment. The use of everyday elements is recurrent in his poetics: the artist transforms them into iconic monuments of the contemporary era which, playing with a captivating pop aesthetic, reveal the critical issues of our present. Brainforest is a tribute to the city of Rome, from which all the roads that embrace the earth start.

From the branches of the tree, colored masks, ethnic objects and travel documents based on shapes and colors and used in past times to move within the African continent blossom like fruit: «These masks sprinkled with colors are proof of the long journey traveled so far by man through a thousand and one roads in the earthly savannah and, like fruits on a blue tree trunk in the center of a golden globe, they will witness the urgencies and dramas of our present", PM Tayou.

The creation of Brainforest is supported by the Friends of MAXXI and once completed the work will become part of the Museum's collection. in title: Pascale Marthine Tayou, La source, 2018. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, photo by Jan Theun van Rees, ADAGP, Paris.