After the first part of the exhibition L’Esprit du large presented at the Cécile Fakhoury’ space in Dakar in the summer of 2019, the second part of the collective exhibition is now being held at the gallery in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. L’Esprit du large is an invitation to see far away, to decompartmentalize views and knowledge; an invitation to meetings at the crossroads. For this second chapter, the artists’ installations change scale and respond to their new in situ context. Playing on the inside/outside of the gallery, the height of the picture rails and the scale of the volumes, the works weave poetic links between them according to the artists’ imaginations and approach each other without imposed order to invite us to think about new itineraries.

Dimitri Fagbohoun exorcises the impact of history through the word “nigger”.

Dimitri Fagbohoun‘s rounded letters and soft neon light could make the object decorative if the word inscribed was not so heavy with history. The word “nigger” stands here as a familiar luminous sign, that of a trade in the era of contemporary globalization whose softened and polished forms could seduce, but whose background remains violent. Exorcise the weight of history by pronouncing the word – nigger – and making it a rich semantic tool for healing a contemporary identity. Dimitri Fagbohoun expresses a relationship with history in which his writing disturbs the models that constitute it.

Sadikou Oukpedjo explores the search for our deepest origins

Sadikou Oukpedjo draws from the myths of various cultures to give substance and substance to his anthropomorphic figures. The Nouvelles mythologies #11 and Untitled paintings are crossed by the invisible and its power, by the unknown and the hidden. Sadikou Oukpedjo is part of an approach that questions our deep origins, thus responding to the human need to access self-knowledge through multiple and ancestral attempts: cosmogony, rituals, witchcraft. The artist then becomes a magician, master, illusionist, scientist.

Ouattara Watts, beyond geographies and nationalities: the Cosmos?

Numbers, shapes, but also textures and fabrics make up Ouattara Watts‘ plastic language. Each of the artist’s paintings is a dynamic microcosm, a negative partition of the cultures that make up his universe: jazz music, African traditions and rituals, abbjad and Hebrew guematria numeration to name but a few of his influences. Door of the Cosmos #1 and #2, Farafina #2, and Untitled are visual and spiritual journeys. Ouattara Watts explores in his painting the intangible links that transcend geography and nationalities.

Dalila Dalléas Bouzar stages female forces imbued with mystical powers

Dalila Dalléas Bouzar‘s paintings impose themselves on us with the assurance of a choreography that is repeated a thousand times over. A ritual, incantatory or warlike parade, the power of the female body is chanted with force. The skies, prey to their own mood, overlook each of these silhouettes. They seem to be the extensions of these witch-warrior souls. The gestures of their choreography are the repositories of ancestral knowledge. Questioning in her practice the codes of representation in painting, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar has constantly reintroduced in her works the dissenting figures of a vernacular history.

Jems Koko Bi creates bridges between worlds at the borders of their separates

Continuing a constitutive reflection of Jems Koko Bi‘s work on notions of space and history, Retour is the vision of a positive exodus, free of the tragic stereotypes often associated with contemporary migration. The work is a procession to the house; to the walls built with our desires, hopes, and hands. Both sculptor and performer, Jems Koko Bi blends avant-garde influences with his resolutely African history. As a man who is a link between tradition and contemporary, Africa and Europe, Côte d’Ivoire and Germany, Jems Koko Bi practices an art of crossing and building bridges where worlds separate.

François-Xavier Gbré and the ambiguous remains of colonialism

The series of photographs taken by François-Xavier Gbré in Benin in 2012 celebrate, through his enigmatic images, the ambiguous power that a symbol of memory can take. The statue of Reconciliation in Cotonou, Benin, located on the esplanade of the Porte du Retour embodies the responsibility of states in triangular trade. Two similar statues exist throughout the world, in Liverpool in the United Kingdom and in Richmond in the United States, thus tracing a physical and symbolic geography through these three places. From colonial remains to landscapes modified by current events, François-Xavier Gbré explores territories and revisits history.

Yo-Yo Gonthier and memory erasure in the technology-oriented Western society

Burey Bambata (The Great Clouds) by Yo-Yo Gonthier is a collective ode to dream about. In this video, a visual epic shot with a Super 8 camera, Yo-Yo Gonthier brings together the whimsical dreams of an artist as a brilliant inventor and the semantic richness rooted in the history of vernacular customs that touch both the artist’s personal history and that of a part of Africa. He takes as his video protagonist the Cloud, this sculpture of fabric of several meters realized in 2013 and reactivated several times during performances whose preparation can be found in the photographs of notebooks and models. Plastic photographer Yo-Yo Gonthier questions the erasure of memory in a Western society where speed, progress and technology seem to be the essential values.

Vincent Michéa between West African musical nostalgia and personal stories

Vincent Michéa‘s paintings resonate within the gallery’s walls with the lively notes of Fax Clark and François Lougah. At the height of their career in the 1970s, these artists evoked a musical history at the crossroads of cultures. For several years, Vincent Michéa has been painting vinyl covers with acrylic paint. The artist has gradually built up a visual anthology of West African music, recording through the personal history of his encounters and affections for these musics, the more general history of a popular culture of which some parts have now disappeared.

L’esprit du large Chapter II

Group Show

Cécile Fakhoury Gallery – Abidjan

On view until 30th November 2019

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Curated by Jeanne Mercier and Baptiste de Ville d’Avray of photography platform Afrique in Visu and the independent curator Madeleine de Colnet, the exhibition brings together the work of approximately 40 emerging and established photographers who are working from a distinctly African perspective. The artists examine universally relevant cultural concepts of tradition, spirituality, family and the environment, within the context of modern African experiences and daily life.

Africa Is No Island celebrates Afrique in Visu’s decade long working practice by selecting artists who have previously shown work on the platform as well as those from within Fondation Alliances’ collection. This platform itself has become a “visual territory”, overcoming borders and reporting different perspectives on, around and from the African continent. The curators have chosen works based on the following three themes; ‘Je suis ma représentation’ (I am my own representation), Dessiner des géographies’ (Drawing Borders) and ‘Recueillir l’histoire’ (Transcribe History). This display runs alongside a collage-based photography installation of works by other Afrique in Visu artists which covers part of the exhibition space.

The museum space has been transformed by architecture firm lazraqbret into an immersive environment inspired by the traditional architecture of Moroccan medinas, which are typically walled, with many narrow and maze-like streets. Visitors enter the exhibition via a door shaped in the customary circular style. The complex corridors ensure that visitors explore artworks in a staggered and measured manner, concealing the rich variety of artworks within. The exhibition is accompanied by a sound installation by Italian artist Anna Raimondo which emulates the everyday noises of Marrakech. By immersing the audience in a unique audiovisual environment, the setting brings to life the photographic practice in present-day Africa while reflecting MACAAL’s commitment to placing Moroccan art within the wider context of African cultural output.

The multi-layered images of Benin-based, Ivory Coast-born photographer Ishola Akpo blur the lines between fiction and reality. The series L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux, shown previously at Lagos Photo Festival, explores the photographer’s family history and memories through images which detail his grandmother’s dowry: gin bottles, clothes and beads.

Johannesburg-based artist Lebohang Kganye’s photography incorporates her interest in sculpture and performance, as well as her efforts to archive and memorialise her personal history and identity through family photographs.

Ecological issues linked to plastic and electronic waste are recurrent themes in Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo’s series Les Phantoms du Fleuve Congo which is inspired by the colonial-era text The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The works create a contemporary vision of the Congo River by showing life as it is lived in and around the symbolic artery of Africa.

Maïmouna Guerresi, a multimedia artist working with photography, sculpture, video, and installation, creates images which are suffused with spiritualism and are directly related to her own conversion to Sufism. Using recurring motifs such as the veil, her portraits are an affirmation and celebration of female spirituality and African womanhood.

Participating artists

• Anna Raimondo, Italy
• Ayana V Jackson, United States of America
• Baudouin Mouanda, Congo-Brazzaville
• Edgar Marsy, Réunion
• François-Xavier Gbré, Ivory Coast
• Hicham Benohoud, Morocco
• Hicham Gardaf, Morocco
• Ishola Akpo, Benin
• Joan Bardeletti, France
• Joana Choumali, Ivory Coast
• Lebohang Kganye, South Africa
• Leila Alaoui, France-Morocco
• Maïmouna Guerresi, Italy-Senegal
• Mohamed El Baz, Morocco
• Mohammed El Mourid, Morocco
• Mohammed Laouli, Morocco and Katrin Ströbel, Germany
• Mouna Karray, Tunisia
• Mustapha Azeroual, France-Morocco
• Namsa Leuba, Switzerland-Guinea
• Nicola Lo Calzo, Italy
• Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso
• Sammy Baloji, Democratic Republic of the Congo Walid Layadi
• Marfouk, Morocco

Paricipating artists, Africa is No Island; Collage-based photography installation of works

• Abdoulaye Barry, Chad
• Adrien Bitibaly, Burkina Faso
• Baudouin Mouanda, Congo-Brazzaville
• Carolle Benitah, France-Morocco
• Cristina de Middel, Spain
• David Lemor, France-Réunion
• Fakhri El Ghezal, Tunisia
• Fatoumata Diabaté, Mali
• Fethi Sahraoui, Algeria
• François-Xavier Gbré, Ivory Coast
• Georges Senga, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Héla Ammar, Tunisia
• Hélène Jayet, France-Mali
• Hicham Gardaf, Morocco
• Ishola Akpo, Benin
• Joan Bardeletti, France
• Joana Choumali, Ivory Coast
• Lebohang Kganye, South Africa
• Nabil Boutros, Egypt-France
• Namsa Leuba, Switzerland-Guinea
• Nestor Da, Burkina Faso
• Nicola Lo Calzo, Italy
• Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso Philippe Guionie, France
• Seydou Camara, Mali
• Wiame Haddad, France-Morocco-Tunisia Ymane Fakhir, Morocco
• Yo-Yo Gonthier, France-Réunion

Africa is No Island

Museum of African Contemporary Art Al-Maden (MACAAL), Al Maaden, Sidi Youssef Ben Ali, 40000
Marrakech

Tuesday – Sunday, 10h – 18h

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