I am a member of a blacksmith family which, from many generations, has been working with metal, all precious metal, or other less valuable kinds like iron, etc…
At a very young age, I learnt the technic of lost-wax in my family workshop; I was 7 years old and I was helping my father to give the finishing touches to scour, polish and mould his works. When my father passed away in 1983, my elder brother became the manager of the workshop and I had worked with him till 1990. I became more curious to know about other materials, so I decided to make use of stone and timber, which were still being used by many artists among us.
In 1992, I exhibited my first works at the Ouagadougou International Fair for Handicrafts; then progressively I was using more kinds of materials. Presently, I use many "found objects", this is an important approach for me, in terms of ecological and economical issues, because of the very low cost.
My works reflect scenes of everydaylife, and sometimes fugitive images that I try to seize, to stop the time.
I am living in Ouagadougou since 1993.
Bringing Together
Fragments of two cultures
The thema of "bringing together" is the result of a fusion of two observations:
One is the view of somebody from the "South", just arrived in Amsterdam, and who is confronted to a communication problem, but in its very large sense:"globalisation", similarities one could depict between the Dutch culture and the one of my country, no matter the distance which separates us; the colours of paintings on the windows of houses represent for me colours which I can see on masks from my country.
Secondly, what more astonishing to me , it is the fact of seeing all these objects and things thrown away as rubbish. For me this is an opportunity to learn but also to show that, apart from our material difficulties and the lack of infrastructure related to artistic creativity, one could get inspiration from tradition and create contemporary artistic works with less means.