The presentation offers a look at the different artistic approaches of the four creators, preserving and reinventing their symbolic link with the earth, in the face of contemporary climatic realities through their distinctive lenses. Sheila Fuseini from Ghana and Oyeyemi in Nigeria play on comparisons with the times, those of the diluvian cataclysms at the origins of the world and our own: floods, overflowing dams, displacement of populations…(Going with the flow), (Flood in Nigeria). For S.A. Camara,, the Casamance potter, the link with the environment is through her medium – clay or umhlaba (mother earth). Crossing cultures and eras, Soly Cisse, humorously proposes an alternative to the myth of the Garden of Eden where Eve, resisting temptation, turns into a snake, symbol of regeneration.
These artists unfold a story of Nature around man and his relationship with the natural world, crossing continents and cultures, integrating mediums such as clay in both its strength and fragility.
Seyni Awa Camara (1940, Bignona) lives and works in Casamance, Senegal.
For S.A. Camara, the Casamance potter, the link with the environment is through her medium – clay or umhlaba, (mother earth) – an ageless material that ties her to her rural village. The artist invokes a legend that, despite its fictitious nature, embraces local beliefs and the myths of forest spirits. Her haunting Maternities and ‘child-pottery’, now exhibited worldwide, have long had to contend with the weight of ancestral prohibitions. S.A. Camara’s works are on show at the U.S. Embassy in Dakar as part of the Art in Ambassy, (AIE) program and the Dak’art Biennale 2024, until December 2024..
Sheila Fuseini, (1983, Accra) lives and works inTema, (Accra), Ghana
Lets the artist take us on a trip¦ (Laissons l-artiste nous emmener en voyage¦)
Originally from Northern Ghana, Sheila Fuseini conceives the space of her canvases as a journey, inviting us to share in the world she depicts. Her savannah landscapes, horizon lines, skies and the shores of the immense Lake Volta that runs through her country, evoke a free expansion, limited only by the edges of the canvas. Her poetic engagement with color reflects his sensory perception, inspired by Kandinsky’s expressive system. Between abstraction and figuration, a few figurative elements are inserted without hierarchy, the unpredictable encounters of a house with the same value as a leaf. The artist applies the principle of collage using scraps of leather on tulle or panel, giving her painting a sense of materiality that gives the viewer a tactile experience, opening up new interpretations of her work. Here, the earthen house of childhood in the heart of the northern savannahs, the region of his birth. Here, the South, the vast sky, the shores of Lake Volta… the emotional cartography of a journey through different places and moments in the artist’s life, a kind of kaleidoscope inviting the eye to glide from one space to another, all the way to the Gulf of Guinea, where S. Fuseini now lives and draws on new creative sources linked to her memories, identity and culture..
Adewumi Oyeyemi (1998, Igogo, Nigeria) lives and works in Ondo City, Nigeria.
Adewumi’s committed, socially critical work is set against a backdrop of climate crises affecting local communities in his native region, the Ekiti highlands in southwest Nigeria;Adewumi’s work is woven with metaphors that reactivate the symbols, philosophy and morals of Yoruba proverbs. The painting Flood in Nigéria II, for example, in which water cascades from one of the wicker baskets, is inspired by the proverb: “He who uses a basket to fetch water is mistakenâ€. The artist’s works, with their strong metaphorical power, intrinsically link her place of origin, criss-crossed by forests, springs and waterfalls, confronted with abusive logging, to the global phenomenon of a country recording the highest rise in average temperature of any country on the African continent. By linking his figures to the world of indigenous Yoruba myths, where they retain a remnant of those first ages, Adewumi is all the more aware of the societal challenges that resonate with the state of our globalized world.
SOLY CISSE (1969, Dakar, Senegal) lives and works in Normandie, France
The gallery is pleased to present a rare set of charcoal drawings by Soly Cisse, dated between 2002 and 2005, from the series Le Monde Perdu, as well as one of the large-format canvases (205 x 315 cm) from the recent series : Ecosystems, where the artist literally tilts into his motif, immersing himself in painting, as close as possible to his relationship with a Nature traversed by the same forces that drive human destinies.- I try to reach man at his deepest level - says Soly Cisse. Fully assuming his presence in the canvas, the painter seems to break in as if by force, taking the viewer as witness with his gaze and gesture, giving every indication of complicity. The figure suggests a strong Eve who swallows not the apple, but the tempting serpent. Revised and corrected by the painter’s irony, she is treated with the materiality of crackle-effect paint, symbolizing her slow metamorphosis into a snake.
The echo it echoes with our contemporary issues gives Soly Cisse’s work an allegorical scope that stands out as much for its timelessness as for its link with an unstable present that connects us to history.
A new monograph, prefaced by Helene Tissieres, has just been published by the gallery with the support of the CNAP.
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