“Artists don’t create reality they make phantasms”, using a kind of “fantastical technique to produce an artificial dream for the waking world”. At least that’s what Plato thought. In the paintings of Aboudia, we cannot be sure if the figures are alive or dead, if the nightmare they inhabit is reality or fabrication. The figures are drawn […]
Guest Post by Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney The recent announcement of the Guggenheim Foundation’s new “Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative” bears all of the hallmarks of the present era. It is funded by a bank. It has the word “global” in its title. It claims explicitly to challenge “a Western-centric view of art […]
A painting sits glowering on the wall of the Jack Bell Gallery in London. Figures daubed in bright colours stare out from the canvases against a dark background broken up by bits of newspaper cuttings. This is Les Fantômes, the work of Aboudia, a 26-year-old Ivorian painter whose stark images have recently been receiving some […]
James North: Orientalism takes a different form in sub-Saharan Africa. There, Orientalists do not emphasize the “Islamic” angle quite as much, although they do sometimes suggest that a “fault line” running across the Sahel, with an expansive “Islam” to the north and “Christianity” to the south, is a reliable guide to conflict in many countries. But […]
That’s how Alexis Okeowo (on Twitter) sums up the end of the four-month stand-off against democracy by Cote d’Ivoire’s former Life President, Laurent Gbagbo. The New York Times has the details and the photograph above on the arrest of Gbagbo. He was found “… sweating [and] plaintive … he appeared in a white tank-top undershirt, […]
Away from Al Jazeera English, Twitter, Facebook and CNN’s cameras and his country’s media muzzled and harassed, Cote d’Ivoire’s life president and xenophobe, Laurent Gbagbo, uses the army (this is crucial support; about 60,000 men) and armed youths– doing drill exercises in the football strip of the national soccer team and calling themselves “The Young […]
Zepekenio, an Ivoirian-based artist has just released a track called “No Stress” a timely message out of Abidjan. This party rap track on the label Frimaur is part of a genre Zepekenio’s calling “Le Chocogangsta Rap.” Listen and download here:
As The Guardian reports today oil trader Trafigura has been fined €1 million for attempting to transport toxic waste to Ivory Coast in 2006. Trafigura had initially chartered the ship Probo Koala, used to transport hundreds of tonnes of chemical slops to Amsterdam, in July 2006. When told it would have to pay the clean-up costs, […]
The very talented Ivorian artist Paul Sika (I’ve linked to Paul’s work last year on my old blog) has sent me an email about the publication of his new book, “At The Heart Of Me…” which is now available at Paul’s brand new Paul Sika Store. Here‘s a link the trailer for the project. Paul […]
