Tempêtes de poussières à Kidal

2013
Omar Ba

India ink, acrylic, gouache on corrugated cardboard mounted on aluminium frame
200 x 150 cm

Surrounded by the United Nations, adorned with medals, the character observes the Western world to which he is tied: the Statue of Liberty, skyscrapers, guns. A beaming god, half man, half tree, the large figure clutches the threads like a puppeteer or a fishermen pulling up a net whose contents he must sort through.

Hangs

Collection : A Selection of African artworks

From 26 April 2017 to 4 September 2017

After training at the Beaux-Arts in Dakar, Omar Ba moved to Geneva in 2003. His painting, often carried out on cardboard - a support he considered more manageable than canvas and more absorbent than paper - retains abstract beginnings of the artist a great ornamental quality and a diversity of techniques (ink, pencil, oil painting, gouache…).

But since his arrival in Europe, Ba gathers his art with symbols and metaphors: his great characters are related to heroes of tales where current events and disparate mythology mingle, stories nourished by African traditions and his own inventions.

In the same hang

"Remains of households in a children's game called onopopi, and the shells of incomplete houses in a housing scheme that stalled. Kwezinaledi, Lady Grey, Eastern Cape", 2006

David Goldblatt

"Incomplete houses, part of stalled municipal developpment of 1000 houses. The allocation was made in 1998, building started in 2003. Officials and a politician gave various reasons for the stalling o, 2006

David Goldblatt