Paris (AFP)
They create with recycled materials and what comes to hand: young artists from Africa and its diasporas, many of whom came to the AKAA fair in Paris, are slowly but surely asserting themselves on the international scene with the vivid vigor of their creation.
"Also known as Africa" at the Carreau du Temple, from Saturday to Monday, this year's central topic urban space of megacities as a matter and place of creation. Anarchic cities that must be reinvested with culture and art.
Plastics, telephone or computer cables, cans, wood, and various fabrics, often serve as supports for works with a wide variety of themes. A certain poverty of the means gives a thickness and an increased strength to the images.
The photo is given priority because the fair coincides with Paris Photo, an unmissable event for fans and collectors of photos at the Grand Palais.
This is an opportunity for emerging artists from Africa to become better known. The range of prices is very wide - the highest reaching 35,000 to 40,000 euros - but some works are very affordable for the "first buyers", who come in large numbers.
- "crazy adventure" -
The young president and creator of AKAA, Victoria Mann, art historian by training, who started her career at the Metropolitan in New York and worked at the PACE gallery in Paris, contemplates the path accomplished since the first edition in 2016: 30 exhibitors and 10,000 visitors four years ago for 50 exhibitors and nearly 15,000 visitors expected this year, with the works of 138 artists from 40 countries.
"I embarked on this crazy adventure, without necessarily knowing, thankfully, in what I started ...", smiles this passionate woman.
She wanted to "create this platform to federate all contemporary scenes that claim a link with Africa".
"It's not so much a passport story, but links, glances, we do not want to + geographize the thing ... They are first and foremost artists, there is an incredible diversity of stories that these artists tell" , she says.
These artists tell their stories with modesty, sobriety and dignity. The nobility of many portraits of men and women is striking.
This fair is a dialogue between African, Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian artists ... They "work on issues of heritage, history, links between continents", according to the patron of the fair.
At the Nil Gallery, the 24-year-old Ghanaian Prince Gyasi, who is photographing with his Iphone for lack of other means, thinks that colors can heal: from his deep and dense backgrounds, stand out, clean, vibrant, young figures .
Hybrid identity
Same energy in the photos of Nigerian David Uzochukwu, 20 years old, the youngest artist of AKAA this year, exhibited by the Number 8 Gallery in Brussels, or in the three pictures of the face of a young South African portrayed by Sakhile Cebekhulu (Good Hope Gallery).
The Ivorian Yeanzi (Nil Gallery) recycled plastic bits, melted them and poured on a support. His message: Africa must be reborn from the ashes, without outside help.
Carte blanche was given to the Portuguese Francisco Vidal, of Angolan and Cape Verdean parents, who works between Lisbon and Luanda and mixes cubist influences, wax-print textiles, hip-hop culture, graffiti and street art. He is the prototype of a hybrid intercultural identity, as many of the artists at this fair who live in many places and are of mixed origins.
The Angolan colonial history and its consequences are questioned in the work of Francisco Vidal, with a strong emphasis on working practices, collective memory, conflicts. One of his works consists of machetes painted in various colors and glued to each other.
AKAA is distinguished by its conviviality, offering a fluid and open space, conducive to shows, choreographies, film screenings, meetings, commercial but also cultural, artistic, philosophical or intellectual.
© 2019 AFP