Africa Vibes: at Opificio Golinelli a journey through the African works of the Marino and Paola Golinelli Collection
Works by Joël Andrianomearisoa (Antananarivo, Madagascar, 1977), Abdoulaye Konaté (Diré, Mali 1953), Gonçalo Mabunda (Maputo, Mozambique, 1975), Cameron Platter (Johannesburg, South Africa, 1978), Pascale Marthine Tayou, (Yaoundé, Cameroon, 1967), Ouattara Watts, (Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 1957), all made in the last decade, in a coherent path with the multidisciplinary and didactic approach to art that the Golinelli Foundation proposes through the activities of the project area Art, Science and Knowledge, especially through the major exhibitions held annually since 2010.
The 11 works present at Opificio Golinelli were chosen from the approximately 600 works in the Golinelli Collection. Different from each other in the languages used and in the expression of individual poetics, they are however combined by the common use of techniques strongly marked by craftsmanship, by the recovery and transformation of found materials, by placing themselves halfway between the culture of origin and western experience. Characteristics that will be explored in the teaching and laboratory activities proposed by the tutors of the Golinelli Foundation, working on themes, such as reuse, which are not only politically and anthropologically correct but which today constitute one of the most sophisticated and current forms of expressive research not only in art but also in design, architecture, even cinema.
Jean Apollinaire Tayou was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon in 1967. In the mid-nineties, he changed his name, declining it to a feminine one, thus becoming Pascale Marthine Tayou. Tayou's work is closely linked to the idea of travel and encounters with the other. That of the traveler for Pascale Tayou is not just a condition of life, but a psychological condition, exploring contemporary themes such as those of identity, cultural appropriation, the permeability of borders in relation to human migrations. Tayou made his immigrant condition the expression of a whole generation of men and artists: those who place themselves "halfway" between their original culture and the Western experience; African in spirit but at the same time new European citizens; disoriented and post-colonial. In Fashion Street's colorful human-form sculptures, Tayou combines glass, sponges, wool, plastic, leather, sea beads and shells, and other recycled materials in a work that is strongly related to his specific cultural background. The "dresses" worn by the figures are inspired by African tribal shapes, combined with objects that come from the European consumer society. The figures themselves are built with glass produced a few kilometers from Florence.
The artists…
Born in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) in 1957, Ouattara Watts studied in a religious school, and received an early initiation into shamanic rituals, despite living in a big city and therefore also being exposed to urban culture. A condition straddling modernity and tradition that will be reflected in his works. In 1977 he moved to Paris to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In the French capital, at the end of the eighties, he meets Jean Michel Basquiat, with whom he becomes friends, who will convince him to move to New York, where he still resides today. Author of a vibrant painting of colours, materials and hypnotic signs, Watts explores multicultural identity and the sense of spirituality in contemporary society. Over time he has developed a rich expressive code, an alphabet of shapes, numbers, letters, scientific and religious symbols, which he uses, merging it with the use of found and recycled objects, photography and other media, to communicate his dynamic and poetic vision of society and history and his personal approach to metaphysics. His works evoke ancestral Africa but also the influences of artists such as Picasso or Cy Twombly, remaining suspended between two worlds, creating a bridge between them. “My vision is not based on belonging to a country or a continent – says the artist – but goes beyond geography, beyond what can be seen on a map. Even if some of my pictorial elements can be referred to a specific culture, and thus be better understood, my work concerns something much wider, it concerns the Cosmos”. Le Fleurs du Mal I quotes the famous collection of poems by Baudelaire - which deals with metaphysical, theological and exotic themes - and combines the use of a precious oriental fabric, images of demonic figures, lines of numbers that symbolize the slave routes and shapes biomorphic or elementary, traced according to a form of improvisation reminiscent of jazz.
The South African artist Cameron Platter (Johannesburg, 1978, lives in Cape Town and KwaZulu Natal) conceives his work as a form of reportage, which describes what he sees around him: «night clubs, fast food, crime stories, the world of art, TV, movies, politics, consumerism…». Reality, with its inexhaustible variety and extraordinary complexity, provides him with a repertoire of images which the artist then disperses through many media: drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, tapestries, wall drawing, video. What is ordinary and marginal in his work is filled with incendiary meanings, communicated in an extremely direct way, a denunciation of consumerism, degradation, inequality, of the latent conflicts that run through South African society. His immediate and subversive language is inspired by the world of childhood and popular art, but also by the linocuts of a master of South African art like John Muafangejo and by protest posters. Risk is a large pastel drawing on paper, a technique widely used by the artist, with flat color fields and a very graphic use of black and white that makes the work look like an engraving. It belongs to a series of large-format works that Platter considers "Nomadic Murals", according to Le Courbusier's definition of tapestries. «It's what you do that puts you on risk!!!» (It's what you do that puts you at risk!!!) we read at the center of the work. The writing is accompanied by the image of a hen which occupies almost the entire surface, standing out against a background decorated with a stylized motif of hundreds of freshly laid eggs. Animals are often used in Platter's works as a mirror of human behaviors. In this case the reference is to the constant increase in production rhythms, to increasingly full and longer working hours, especially for less skilled workers, which contrasts with the physiological needs for breaks and rest, increasing the risk of illness, injuries, stress.
The title that Joël Andrianomearisoa (Antananarivo, Madagascar, 1977) chose for this work is no coincidence: Untitled – Few of my favorite Things. In fact, the work presents some of the characteristic elements of his work. First of all the material used: the fabric, which recalls his training, which began at the age of twelve at the Fashion Academy in his native Madagascar. Secondly the shapes: radically geometric. Thirdly, colour: black, which offers the artist «infinite possibilities. In each piece, I have to find variations in the spectrum of black, different positions of black. It's not just a color, but also an attitude… it aims at the universal». After his first studies in his native Madagascar, Andrianomearisoa continued his training in Paris, Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, where he was a pupil of Odile Decq, feeling his "dark" atmospheres that characterize the works of the famous architect. He therefore arrived at a conception that he defined as «archi-clothing»: a practice that occupies a hybrid territory between art, fashion, design, architecture. This large rectangular tapestry also participates in the contributions between these different sectors, composed of geometric scraps of fabrics that decline an infinite scale of black, in an overlapping of layers that reaches a three-dimensional and sculptural density. A work that arises from a series of manipulations that lead in their making to the final result, the result of the need to be surprised by the objects that are born from one's own hands.
Gonçalo Mabunda (Maputo, 1975) works on the collective memory of his country, Mozambique, which experienced a long and terrible civil war that began when he was a child, shortly after independence from Portugal at the end of five centuries of colonization. His sculptures are made with weapons seized from the guerrillas at the end of the conflict, which lasted from 1977 to 1992. Recycled in anthropomorphic forms that refer to traditional African masks - different in every region of the continent and a source of inspiration for so much Western art, from Picasso to Braque up to the more contemporary Thomas Houseago- the weapons used by Mabunda have a strong meaning of political denunciation but, at the same time, propose a positive reflection on the ability of art to transform things. An ability that belongs in particular to African creativity, a master in recycling what already exists, often waste or materials of no value, giving life to beautiful works. Surprising, ironic and imaginative, the masks are flanked, in Mabunda's work, by larger works that take the form of thrones, apparently similar to the expressions of African court art highly sought after by international collectors. Also made with deactivated weapons, they present an open reference to the tribal symbology of power, with the intention of denouncing the responsibilities of politicians for a situation of instability that is once again generating violence in the country. Mozambique is the only nation in the world to have a firearm as a symbol on its flag.
Abdoulaye Konaté (1953, Diré. Lives in Bamako) is a Malian artist among the most recognized on the African continent. The search for him moves between the conflicts of the modern world and the artisan tradition of his country of origin. Typical of his stylistic hallmark are the large-format "tapestries" in which hundreds of strips of hand-dyed fabric, mainly cotton (one of the fundamental crops of Mali), cascade down and combine in fascinating chromatic effects. With these works, the artist refers to the West African tradition of using fabrics as a means of commemoration and communication. Initially oriented towards abstraction, Konaté's research then opened up more and more to references to reality and the social, linking itself to geopolitical current events, to themes such as war, the struggle for power, religion, globalization, changes ecological and the AIDS epidemic. In recent years many of his works refer to the civil war in Mali between government forces, Tuareg separatists and Islamist rebels, criticizing all forms of violence motivated in religious or ethnic terms. Particular in Konatè's itinerary is the work Koré Dugaw (Mali), an installation consisting of a large tapestry with figures wearing masks and symbolic objects typical of one of the Bambara initiatory societies, the Koré, and a mannequin wearing a colorful fringed cape. In the author's words, “this monumental work is a tribute to the group of initiates Korè Dugaw, very important for Malian culture as it represents the most open part of society. Indeed, the initiates are granted total freedom of expression: they can express themselves freely and criticize all aspects of society, even launching vehement criticisms against exponents of politics, culture, etc. The fetish cloak also becomes armor here and represents the role of absolute authority of these 'priests of ideas'.
