This new edition of DDESSINPARIS fair confirms the major role of the event: to be a springboard for the young artistic scene working on drawing in all its forms, and for the galleries that defend it, in France and abroad. By giving it a high profile, alongside more established galleries and artists, DDESSINPARIS contributes to making known and recognising an artistic scene of the future, which energises and passionately irrigates this medium. The event thus remains faithful to its vocation to support, promote and accompany the young actors of tomorrow’s drawing. As a major partner of the actors of the art world, DDESSIN{20} will once again offer professionals, collectors and amateurs, a moment rich in discoveries, in a luminous setting and a friendly atmosphere.

DDESSIN{20} will host about twenty French and foreign galleries, solo shows, an artists’ nursery, and the DDESSIN{20} “coup de coeur”, as well as many specific projects, and will see the awarding of the DDESSIN{20} prize.

The fair, which is open to artists from around the world and from France, is also a significant demonstration of its commitment to giving greater visibility to artists from the African continent. Among the artists related to the African art scene and presented for this 2020 edition of the fair: Nú BARRETO, Diane VICTOR, Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer, Smaïl Kanouté, Dany Leriche, Emmanuel Azizeh, Peteros Ndunde, Thilleli Rahmoun, Emory Douglas, Tahar Ben Jelloun, …

Three solo shows of artists related to the African continent.

Danny Leriche

For this first participation of Dany Leriche, DDESSINPARIS presents the work of an artist without borders or barriers, who will exhibit the drawings from her series “Quest for a Utopian Elsewhere”. Dany Leriche lives and works between France and Mali. A multimedia artist, she uses drawing as well as installation, sculpture and photography.

According to Lolita M’Gouni, “Dany Leriche is one of those dream-makers from another time. A prolific conqueror, traveller and generous. One would imagine her as Rénénoutet or divine Pythia, officiating in a travelling laboratory, where the pleasures of experience and discovery would be associated with the rigour of a work every day renewed. When she is not in Greece, Cuba, Mali, or Dogon country, Dany appears where we did not necessarily expect her, and offers us her fragments of dreams, composite parcels of a fertile imagination.”

Since 2006, the artist has been travelling regularly to West Africa. Poverty and climatic hostility, which are the daily lot of Africans, push thousands of them to emigrate. This is what the artist wanted to present in the series of drawings “Quest for a Utopian Elsewhere”. Dany Leriche has worked and exhibited in many countries around the world, where she has been part of prestigious public and private collections. Among the institutions that have acquired a work by Dany Leriche are the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, the Miniature Museum of Contemporary Art in Amsterdam, and the African Culture Fund (ACF).

Thilleli Rahmoun

For this first participation of the Algerian artist Thilleli Rahmoun, DDESSINPARIS proposes a series of drawings that disturb perceptions, in order to awaken in the viewer a reflection on the relationship that contemporary man has with the outside world. Thilleli Rahmoun was born in Alger in 1978. She graduated in 2007 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and since 2001 from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Alger. She has won several painting prizes, including the Fondation Villa Seurat prize in 2018, under the aegis of the Fondation de France. In 2019, she carried out a fresco project with the young people of the La Cruz neighbourhood in Medellin, Colombia, in partnership with the Villa Seurat Foundation for Contemporary Art, under the aegis of the Fondation de France and the association Grandir Ensemble.

Thilleli Rahmoun has worked for a long time on sensual but uninhabitable spaces, places of life despite the constraints they imply – the presence of incongruous objects, the difficulty of moving around in them. By observing his drawings, the viewer wonders which element is not in his natural environment, but which continues to exist to disturb his reading of the proposed scene.

The artist represents twisted stories, which she places at the heart of dramatized productions, bringing together strong visions in this subtle play, within “passing” places and fictitious spaces. The evocations are numerous, especially those related to frustrated energy. The fragile protagonists are thrown into the arms of a closed world, both witnesses and indifferent judges of their captivity. Thilleli Rahmoun’s work has been the subject of an e-book published by Tribew, which will be presented on a digital tablet on the occasion of DDESSIN {20}.

Smaïl Kanouté

Smaïl Kanouté is an artist who is part of this young generation constantly renewing the visual and aesthetic codes of all disciplines. Passionate about the motif, the universe of manga and African textile motifs, the artist uses them to open a pictorial and cutural dialogue. Smaïl Kanouté is a multi-faceted artist who graduated from ENSAD in 2012. He is a graphic designer, screen-printer, visual artist and professional dancer. Interdisciplinarity is Smaïl Kanouté’s leitmotiv. Dance and graphic design are inseparable in his creative process which is nourished by artistic and cultural crossbreeding. Pattern is the basis of his research and of each of his creations because for him everything is a question of lines, curves, rhythms, emotions and colours. His graphic and scenic researches are also nourished by the question of the identity quest, getting closer to the Afrofuturist movement. He claims to be open to the unknown in order to better discover his true self. It is a kind of initiatory journey that nourishes his creative process: to know oneself better, one must look in the mirror that the other hands out to us.

Smaïl kanouté exhibited at the BZZ Gallery at 104. He collaborates, within the framework of artistic projects and performances, with the artists Tino Seghal, Philippe Baudelocque, Antonin Fourneau and Evans Mbugua. He has just received several awards related to his short film work (Urban Film Festival, Dance on Screen), his drawings have been selected by the Ateliers Médicis for their graphic identity and his work will soon be presented in a collective exhibition at the CENTQUATRE, HERE, and at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer, a favorite of DDessin{20}

Eve de Medeiros, founder and director of DDESSINPARIS, has chosen the artist Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer for the Salon DDESSIN {20}. Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer, a French-Rwandan artist born in 1986 in Rwanda, now lives and works in Ornans. This self-taught artist strives to transmit through drawing his attachment to nature, and to trees in particular, which form the central motif of his evolving work. It is in the image of their creator, who is steeped in intertwined cultures, that the trees he draws unfold their roots with strength and proudly erect a fertile interlacing of branches, which can be seen as so many paths and stories. For the shapes that he weaves with the pen, brush or pencil, leave the viewer completely free to appropriate them and to wander through the story, both universal and particular, that each tree tells.

Madeleine Filippi, art critic and art historian, member of AICA, describes his work in the following terms: “A former pruner, Rwandan Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer admits that he has had a passion for drawing since his training in botany. Self-taught, for him it is at first a mnemonic process, a language in its own right, in which each plant element takes its place in a grammar. From his native Rwanda to Besançon, plants and vegetal elements have never ceased to inspire him. The cotton flower, first of all for its symbolism, but also for its physical properties, comes back like a red thread in the artist’s work. Far from the usual clichés and discourses on pan-Africanism, Samuel N’Gabo Zimmer subtly appropriates the cotton flower. Whether they appear in a very figurative manner or less obviously in the form of vegetable fibres, these drawn propositions cleverly explore a paragon of “anchoring”.

Artskop3437 special project for DDessin{20}

On the occasion of DDESSIN {20}, Artskop3437 is setting up for the first time a unique special project presenting three contemporary artists from the African continent. A specific collaboration format allowing young emerging artists, such as Peteros Ndunde (Nairobi, Kenya), to have a chance to be present on an international market.

The choice of internationally renowned artists Diane Victor and Nú Barreto allows Peteros Ndunde to engage in a dialogue with the works of established artists present in the collections of numerous public and private institutions. A dialogue built around a common denominator, that of exploring human emotions and behaviours from a variety of perspectives.

Artskop3437 joins forces with Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris, Brussels) for this event and presents a selection of new works by the artist Nú Barreto. Nú Barreto was born in 1966, in São Domingos, Guinea Bissau but he has been living in Paris since 1989. He draws attention to the many scourges such as poverty, suffering, discrimination, that are rampant on the African Continent through the use of strong symbols expressed in forms, colors and motifs. His mixed technics, unites drawing, collage, recycling integrates the spectator into the artistic process through the use of painting, photography, drawing and video. His works traveled the world (Germany, Brazil, China, Spain, France, Macao, Portugal, Senegal). His talent and works are internationally recognized since his First exhibitions in 1997.

Alongside Nú Barreto, and Peteros Ndunde, Artskop3437 will present, in collaboration with the Atelier le Grand Village, drawings by the renowned artist Diane Victor, including a masterpiece: an ash drawing titled Mother and Daughter. Victor positions herself within the South African and international art scene through her bold confrontations with difficult and at times taboo subject matter. Her large scale drawings and etchings demonstrate a command of mark-making, which she uses to render her subjects in affecting detail. At times, her work seems to pose challenges to social and political life in contemporary South Africa, considering issues of corruption, violence and an unequal power distribution. It will be the very first time the artist will be presented in an art Fair in France.

Artskop3437 does not intend to be an art gallery but proposes, within the framework of unique specific collaborations, to present the work of a selection of contemporary artists linked to the African continent, on the occasion of international art fairs and ephemeral exhibitions. The aim of this special project is to offer these artists a better exposure, as well as an easier access to the international art market.

DDessin{20}

From September 18th to 20th, 2020

Atelier Richelieu

60, rue de Richelieu

75002 Paris

www.ddessinparis.com

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On September 5, Nathalie Obadia gallery will be opening Homo Imparfaits, Nú Barreto’s first solo show in Brussels.

Born in 1966 in São Domingos, Guinea-Bissau, Nú Barreto has been living and working in Paris since 1989. Chosen to represent his country at the Lisbon World Fair of 1998, the artist has since then received international exposure and established himself as one of the most prominent artists of African contemporary art.

For this new exhibition, the Guinean artist is presenting a series of exclusive drawings along with several paintings from his famous États Désunis d’Afrique series started in 2009. All the exhibited artworks faithfully reflect Nú Barreto’s political engagement. They describe the evils of contemporary African society while also rekindling the hope that Africa frees itself from its past to invent a new future.

Drawing has been Nú Barreto’s favorite medium since childhood. Children would come from neighboring villages to see his drawings, which were the pride of his parents. His works on paper have kept the imaginative liveliness of that time; but they now serve the story of his personal experience of contemporary Africa. And the artist is not complacent. Most of the time, he is bitter and fierce. With his sharp pencils and bloody red paint, Nú Barreto depicts the violence that marked the African continent.

To expose the suffering of African people in drawings

In the midst of this daily reality, Nú Barreto’s homo imperfect plays the lead role. Like a mirror, this black and red ink alter ego bring us back to our own inconsistency and confronts us to our responsibility toward Africa’s current situation.

The homo imperfect is aptly named. His body is distorted by pain and fear. According to the artist, his screaming mouth bears witness of the daily suffering of the African people as well as its collective memory. In that regard, artist Francis Bacon, which paintings so masterfully captured suffering, is a claimed source of inspiration for Nú Barreto, who also mentions Lucian Freud, Willem de Kooning as well as Portuguese painter Paula Rego among his pantheon of reference artists. He borrowed from the latter the subtle blend of realism and symbolism she used for her social satire.

Other fetish objects, like chairs and ladders, reappear from drawings to drawings. The first one, with its broken leg, symbolizes the chronic instability of African states. The second, with its broken rungs, is a metaphor for the social mobility which stalling contributes to the rise of inequality. Nú Barreto’s collection of symbols also includes animals (crows, pigs, chameleons etc.) and obsolete objects like bikes and guitars. On an even stranger note, it rains bananas, nails and even umbrellas, both open and closed.

A seductive satire carrying within it the hope of a shift

This wide variety of symbols draws from West African aboriginal cultures, which artistic production also resorted to the power of signs. To complete this personal semantic, the artist makes an impressionist use of the red color he has chosen for its symbolic power. Papers, whether lacerated or ripped off, also play a role in the depiction of the tormented landscape the homo imperfect is creating at his own image. The various iconographic and plastic resources that Nú Barreto uses in his works on paper all contribute to their strong evocative and emotional power, similar to the drawings of South-African artist William Kentridge.

The exhibited large format paintings are part of his États Désunis d’Afrique series. By changing the colors of the American star spangled flag into red, yellow and green, the three most recurring colors in the flags of the fifty-four African states, the artist emphasizes the disunion of his people he holds responsible for the evils of African societies. According to him, their inability to pull in the same direction is the cause of their dependence towards foreign powers. The black stars anarchically scattered on the shredded strips of Nú Barreto’s Pan-African flags reflect the situation he denounces.

Despite the critical content of his work, the artist continues to have an unfailing trust in men, especially in his homo imperfect, which flaws he likes to ridicule in order for him to correct them. This virtuous power of art has inspired the artist deeply hopeful artworks like La Source, in which each star hangs a book written by an African author. These books alone symbolize the entire intellectual and cultural wealth of African nations. A metaphorical way for the artist to tell his contemporaries that Africa should, and can, take fate into its own hands.

The absence of background or spatial reference in Nú Barreto’s compositions conveys a strong feeling of dizziness. Like a funambulist, the homo imperfect balances himself on the thread that cut through many of his drawings. In the artist symbolic system, this thread represents the “lifeline”, and its recurrence points to the precariousness of existence as much as its permanence.

Nú Barreto exhibited in Belgium for the first time in 2006 for the group show entitled Afrique-Europe: rêves croisés organized by the European Commission ¹.

¹. Afrique-Europe : rêves croisés is an exhibition of contemporary African art organized by the European Commission for the European Development Days at Les Atelier des Tanneurs, November 13-December 10, 2006, Brussels, Belgium. 

Nú Barreto
Homo Imparfaits
September 5 – October 26, 2019
Nathalie Obadia gallery
8 rue Charles Decoster
1050 – Ixelles-Brussels – Belgium

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By borrowing the composition of the American flag, thus referencing Jasper Johns’s American Flag (1954-1955), Nú Barreto inscribes himself in the tradition of artists who use the visual power of symbols to highlight social issues. Let us also mention the artist David Hammons, who, with African-American Flag(1990), questioned public opinion on the African-American cultural identity. By appropriating the color palette of the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) flag, he suggested a hybrid reinterpretation of it. Hammons’s historic flag would inform the political dimension of Barreto’s work.

His works are held by important public and private collections, including the Mucane – Museu Capixaba do Negro in Vitória (Brazil), the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), the Macau Museum (China), the Pró-Justitiae Foundation in Porto (Portugal), and the PLMJ Foundation in Lisbon (Portugal).

© N ú B a r r e t o – Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Galerie Nathalie Obadia,
3 Rue du Cloître Saint-Merri,
75004 Paris

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