Africa Today est un récit de la création contemporaine du continent africain de 1950 à nos jours.
Les artistes qui s’expriment sont fiers, poètes, revendicateurs, questionnent leur Histoire et leur identité, content des récits multiples inspirés des traditions et du présent.
Le public est confronté à l’émotion et la poésie des œuvres de Joël Andrianomearisoa, la contemporanéité ancrée dans la tradition de celles d’Ishola Akpo, la remise en question des savoirs universels d’Aïcha Snoussi, la tradition des premiers portraitistes de Bamako tels que Malick Sidibé et Seydou Keïta, ou encore les dessins sacrés de Frédéric Bruly Bouabré.
Les artistes exposés sont originaires du Bénin, de la Tunisie, de l’Afrique du Sud, du Nigéria, du Congo, du Mali, de la Côte d’Ivoire, de Madagascar, de la Tanzanie. Tous ont été exposés au Musée de la Fondation Zinsou, créée en 2005 au Bénin pour rendre l’art contemporain accessible à tous.
Gratuit, visite le samedi et dimanche de 15h à 19h et sur réservation pour les groupes villeneuvois en semaine au 03 20 61 01 46 ou lafermedenhaut@villeneuvedascq.fr
BAUDOUIN MOUANDA
Born in 1981, Baudouin Mouanda is a Congolese photographer based in Brazzaville. He works in series and his creative themes are varied and linked to his daily life. In recent years, he has created projects related for example to sape, but also hip-hop, marriage and climatic conditions in Brazzaville.
MOKE
Congolese painter born in 1950 and died in 2001. He lived in Kinshasa, which he painted all his life. Considered the father of “Zairian popular painting”, his workshop was located in the city center, at the intersection of the main avenues Kasa-vubu and Bolobo. He became the chronicler of the daily life of the city, painting numerous market scenes, street scenes, refreshment bars, night scenes, etc., on canvases that he recovered, such as sacks of flour.
ISHOLA AKPO
Beninese photographer and multimedia artist. Attached to his Yoruba, Nagô culture and its traditions, Ishola Akpo takes his personal history as a starting point for reflections on the History of his continent. He always works in series, which he adds to during his residencies around the world, through extensive documentary research work, and by enriching his photographic work with various techniques such as ceramics, weaving , bonding, installation, painting, etc. In 2019, he exhibited at the Ouidah Museum, his first major solo exhibition, entitled "AGBARA Women", after 15 months of residency at the Zinsou Foundation, then the exhibition "Studio Visit - Ishola Akpo" in 2023 at the Cotonou Lab. More recently, he was selected for the first Beninese pavilion at the Venice Biennale which will take place from April 2024.
SAMUEL FOSSO
Cameroonian photographer born in 1962, he lives and works in Bangui, in the Central African Republic.
Working as an apprentice in a photography studio run by a Nigerian in 1972, he learned the technique of shooting.
In 1975, he opened his own photography studio, with the motto for his clients: "You will be beautiful, chic, delicate, and easy to recognize." This is one of the photographs taken in this studio at this time that we see here, decor in the background, a couple poses proudly in front of the photographer to immortalize this moment.
From 1976, he became the model for his own photographs. His work then begins to unfold around the theme of self-portraiture. In his photographs, he puts himself on stage, disguised and adorned, embodying different characters. His images, often organized in series, question the clichés associated with Africa.
SEYDOU KEÏTA
Born in 1921 in Bamako and died in 2001, Seydou Keïta is one of the pioneers of Malian photography, whose images, like those of Malick Sidibé, acquired international fame from the 1990s. He opened his studio in 1948 in Bamako, at home, in his courtyard and provides his customers with accessories (scooter, watch, radio, etc.), furniture and even clothing. Like a portrait painter, he seeks to beautify his clients in a refined way.
JEAN DEPARA
Photographer of Angolan origin born in 1928 in Angola and died in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1997. He lived and worked in Kinshasa. His photographs paint a portrait of Zairean society and nightlife in the years around independence. In 1956 he opened his own studio, “Jean Whiskey Depara”, in Léopoldville (today Kinshasa). During the day, he takes portraits and in the evening, he chronicles, through his images, the tumultuous and feverish atmosphere of the Zairian night in the years around independence. He frequents bars, parties and nightclubs in Kinshasa. In 1954 he became the official photographer of Franco, master of the Zairian rumba. His photographs retrace the enthusiasm of young Africans for the American way of life - women pose on American cars, men dress like cowboys - but also the sartorial rivalries of Congolese youth sappers.
SANLE SORY
Photographer born in 1943 in Burkina-Faso, he created the current Volta Photo studio in 1968.
Like many of his African colleagues, he is a witness and an actor of the years following the independence of Upper Volta in 1960. With an amused and nostalgic eye, he remembers the golden age of the studios ( 1965-1980) during which he produced thousands of black and white images. Like the photographers of the new generation, he switched to color in the 1980s, without abandoning his painted settings on canvas which made his reputation.
MALICK SIDIBE
Portraitist and chronicler of Malian youth. Malian photographer born around 1935 and died in 2016. In 1962, he opened his own studio, the “Malick studio”, in Bamako, in the Bagadadji district. His work is in the tradition of studio portraitists based in large African cities. But beyond black and white portraits in the studio, he also produced reports at parties, weddings and evenings. He chronicled the carefree nature of Malian youth who discovered European music, danced the twist and went swimming on Sundays in the Niger River.
OMAR VICTOR DIOP
Omar Victor Diop is a Senegalese artist, born in Dakar in 1980. The aesthetic of his works is in the tradition of studio portraiture, sometimes using fashion images or even self-portraits to construct his series. The artist works in series, questioning issues linked to the representation of identity, and exploring the relationships between the African continent and the West.
His series “Le studio des vanités” is a set of thirty-nine portraits of personalities: journalists, artists, models, bloggers…
His compositions are the result of collaborative work with each of the photographed personalities: clothes, accessories and decorations acquire great importance, because they are significant of an affirmation of identity. Through this series, the artist paints the portrait of a generation active on the Senegalese and African cultural scene, where each portrait anchors the model in an individuality of its own.
ZANELE MUHOLI
South African non-binary activist photographer. Inseparable from his activism within the black LGBTQIA+ community, his photographic work features and celebrates from 2006, in Faces and Phases, the identities of the black gays, lesbians and transgender people he met during his trip to South Africa. Since 2012, he has taken photos of himself, in the series Somnyama Ngonyama, which means “Hello to you, Black Lion” in Zulu, the artist's mother tongue. Adorned with multiple accessories referring to historical figures or personal, socio-political or cultural experiences, with black skin whose contrast is deliberately accentuated, Zanele Muholi gives a "response to the countless racist", homophobic and political exclusions.
AÏCHA SNOUSSI
Tunisian artist born in 1989, she lives in France. Very attached to the practice of drawing, Aïcha Snoussi sometimes leaves the surface of paper to express herself through engraving and on other materials such as walls, stone, bones, and to create large-scale installations. She uses the pencil and reveals protean patterns in which we can recognize human body organs, machines, plants, Arabic calligraphy... In the work Anticodexxx, she attempts to call into question universal knowledge by taking the symbol of a notebook of schoolchildren, the first support of our relationship to knowledge, and by deconstructing it to create the encyclopedia of anti-knowledge, that of knowledge outside the norms of bodies, binarity, power, coloniality, heteronormativity, of language. It is by drawing on the imaginations of queer, feminist and decolonial cultures that she creates fictions which relate other possibilities.
SEYNI AWA CAMARA
Senegalese sculptor born around 1945. She lives and works in Casamance, Senegal. She models imaginary human and animal creatures of small and large dimensions in clay. She learned the practice of clay modeling from her potter mother. The pieces are modeled in clay and fired at low temperature, outdoors, in the courtyard of his house. Seyni Awa Camara transcribes in three dimensions her own visions of the world, inspired by her dreams. It presents a whole population of hybrid or chimerical characters, the vast majority addressing questions of motherhood and fertility. Her practice has a sacred character: she was introduced to her art by the spirits of the forest.
ROMUALD HAZOUME
Beninese artist born in 1962. He lives in Benin. His themes of inspiration are directly linked to his country and its multiple facets, between tradition and modernity, ancestral models and contemporary practices. His creations do not obey a uniform structure and explore different avenues of expression: paintings taking up the signs of the Fâ that he traces on the surface of the canvas (circles, dots, crescents, arrows, snakes, etc.) and translating the design from the Yoruba world; masks made from plastic cans used to contain contraband “kpayo” gasoline, photographs, installations… He defines himself as an “Arè”, an itinerant Yoruba artist who spreads the tradition throughout his wanderings . he was the very first artist to exhibit at the Zinsou Foundation in Cotonou, when it opened in 2005. Ten years later, in 2015, he was re-exhibited on the occasion of the Zinsou Foundation's anniversary, in the exhibition entitled "Romuald Hazoumè - Arè". In April 2024, he is one of the artists selected for the Beninese pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
ESTHER MAHLANGU
South African artist born in 1935. She is part of the Ndebele community in Gauteng, located north of Pretoria. The artistic heritage is passed down from mother to daughter: bead necklaces and murals are executed exclusively by Ndebele women. These wall ornaments are not only decorative, they are also symbols of Ndebele resistance during the Boer War.
Although part of an ancestral cultural tradition, Esther Mahlangu has radically changed the media and techniques used. The artist, in addition to using pigments and industrial colors, applied these lines and geometric patterns to new supports, sculptures, ceramics, automobiles and even airplanes.
GEORGE LILANGA
Tanzanian artist born in 1934 and died in 2005. His paintings and sculptures in bright and frank colors take up the great myths of Makonde culture that the artist reinterprets and mixes with contemporary realities. With a very recognizable style, George Lilanga animates his paintings and sculptures with an effervescent population of half-human, half-imaginary beings: the shetani; these generally malevolent creatures participate in the lives of men in a mystical way.
FREDERIC BRULY BOUABRÉ
Ivorian artist born around 1923 and died in 2014. Following a revelation, he developed a company with a universal vocation of transcribing the world around him. This work results in particular in the invention of the Bété alphabet and in a series of several thousand small-format drawings combining image and writing. On March 11, 1948, a major event occurred in his life: he received a revelation and became “Sheik Nadro: the one who does not forget”. From this moment on, he assumes his role as prophet, responsible for delivering a message to the world. Through the transmission of knowledge, he becomes the messenger and revealer of representations, wisdom and conceptions hitherto ignored. This set of drawings presented on tracing paper is unique because the artist generally executes his drawings on sheets of postcard-sized cardboard (these cardboards are generally packages of strands of artificial hair that he collects and on which he draws at the back).
LYNDI SALES
South African artist born in 1973, Lyndi Sales explores various techniques such as drawing, laser cutting, embroidery, in order to offer visitors “new visions, even a utopian world” and perceive reality in its entirety. A place where I found moments of...: Catacomb dream map, is inspired by a dream following a visit to the Catacombs of Paris which took Lyndi Sales “towards a new world of utopia, connectivity, love , sadness and abandonment” which she embroiders by hand, like a map.
JOËL ANDRIANOMEARISOA
Born in 1977 in Madagascar, Joël Andrianomearisoa lives and works between Paris, Magnat-l'Etrange and Antananarivo. Joël Andrianomearisoa's poetic stories find their forms in various mediums and materials such as installations, sculptures, textile works, papers, writings, drawings... In 2017, the Zinsou Foundation gave carte blanche to the artist Joël Andrianomearisoa on all of its sites. “It is a question of feeling, of desire, of the world, of our time, of an encounter, one day or forever, of a departure, of a journey, of a before and after. » The work The Poem of the Beloved was located in act 3 of the exhibition ON AN INFINITE HORIZON THE THEATER OF OUR AFFECTIONS IS PLAYED, in Ouidah, it was present at the very end of the exhibition, as a piece final, and symbolizes absence. The artist wanted to draw on local knowledge for this project. He was inspired by the women potters of Sè in Benin. And the sound, broadcast within the work, is a piece by Jeanne Moreau and Maria Bethania entitled "poema dos olhos da amada"