Memory and Identity is a constantly evolving project that encourages us to search for and reflect on who we are and what brought us here. This project questions and valorises a story yet to be told, which takes us back to an ancestral past and projects us into a contemporary Africa in need of affirmation.
Art becomes a window to the world, through which dreams, fears, stories, experiences, imaginaries and beliefs are projected. It is up to the artist to reflect, intervene and materialise all these thoughts. It can be a documentary work or a random point of view, which depends on the eye of the beholder. We can create friction or just question, but every work must have a poetic touch so that it reaches a wider audience.
In this series, there is a deconstruction of current imagery to try to understand what brought us here. It invites us to reflect on the influence of African culture in the world, how we observe it and how we are observed. As artists, we have a responsibility to create threads of reflection that emphasise Africa in the world. It's a plunge into a cultural wealth that has often been silenced, but which is now rising up to chart alternative paths on the tracks of globalisation. It's a new way of exploring the dichotomy between the past and the present, between the tribal and the contemporary, between the real and the imaginary.
We live in a throwaway culture that favours a rhetorical vision of the immediate, without understanding the roots that bring us here.
To understand what we are today, you have to go back decades. This "fragile" situation needs to be worked through, and the quickest way to do that is through art. In my work, I draw the lines between the tribal and the contemporary. That's why I'm betting on this great project in permanent construction, which seeks to lead beyond memory and materialise it in pillars that differentiate us, but also bring us closer together.
Originally created: 2024
Subject: Abstract
Material: Canvas
Medium: Mixed Media
Styles: Abstract Expressionism, Modern, Conceptual
