Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

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Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (* 1923 in Zéprégüé , Ivory Coast , † January 28, 2014 in Abidjan , Ivory Coast) was an Ivorian poet and painter who lived in Abidjan.

life and work

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré was born in 1923 in Zéprégüé in what was then the Federation of French West Africa , today the Ivory Coast. He belonged to the Bété , the third largest tribe in the country and was educated in a Catholic school. He became known as the author of numerous poems, as a narrator and as a graphic artist. He mainly dealt with the topics of language and identity. Bouabré was a self-taught artist and worked in the navy, the railroad and as an office clerk .

“I was first an official of the French colonial power , later of the Republic of Ivory Coast. I took care of the identity cards. With independence, like all African nations, we got a president, the sadly deceased Félix Houphouët-Boigny . He was very kind to the arts, and the dancers and singers often performed before him. I asked myself: Are dance and music the whole art? As I said, I think being able to speak is art, being able to see is art, being able to swim is art. Art is something universal that lives in every person. I had learned to draw at school, and so I made countless drawings with which I tried to circle it. I hung up these drawings and the President then also visited the Accrochage . "

- Quote from Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

On March 11, 1948, Bouabré had a religious vision that prompted him to work for decades on various work cycles that wanted to depict the world in one large, interconnected work. Based on this experience, Bouabré was given the nickname "Cheik Nadro", which means something like: "He who does not forget".

The various work cycles that Bouabré has been working on for decades include:

  • Knowledge of the world
  • Museum of African Faces
  • Antique Art Africain , a cosmogony that begins with the sun and the earth

He created a graphic alphabet in his mother tongue Bété in syllabary in order not only to leave the culture of his tribe to oral tradition , but to write it down and thus tear it from oblivion. The cultural identity of Black Africa in the present depends on the written tradition . The Africa explorer Théodore Monod published the Bété script for the first time in 1958.

The artist expressed himself as follows on the relationship between writing and oral tradition:

“I rarely watch TV. Until a few decades ago, Africa lived almost without writing. One spoke of the stage of "orality", the oral tradition. The primacy and power of Europe over Africa was based on Scripture. Scripture is thinking. That's why I am so interested in writing. When I look at TV I think: That's orality! A new culture of orality in the middle of Europe - like in Africa before literacy by the Europeans! "

- Quote from Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

With colored pencil and ballpoint pen on small cardboard boxes, roughly the size of a postcard (15 × 9.5 cm), he drew a kind of pictogram every day and provided every drawing with a French, symbolic frame. On the back, the pictures are always marked with the day, sometimes the hour of the event.

“Let's say I'm drawing a mythical person with a big belly. When I do that, I must also provide the caption of why the person in the fairy tale or story has a big belly, and so on. You have to explain pictures. Because a picture can mean anything, but if it is also about thinking, you have to show that. Thinking is just as important as images, as is pleasure for the eyes. "

- Quote from Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

For some time, Bouabré's work was received and valued by a broad European public .

“The art historian Olu Oguibe believes that Bouabré's works are valued in the West today not because of the sophistication that Okwui Enwezor rightly recognized in them, but rather because the works lie outside the parameters of conventional western criteria and therefore unintentionally dubious, perverted wishes and expectations wake up. Formally they evade the norms of the West; they symbolize the coveted distance between the West and Africa, and they satisfy the desire for fantasies, fetishes and shamanism. "

- Quote from Katrin Bettina Müller

Exhibitions (selection)

Movie

  • Nadro, France 1997, 85 min, director: Ivana Massetti , actor: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

literature

  • Philippe Bordas: L'invention de l'écriture , Fayard, Paris 2010, ISBN 9782213635507 .
  • Inclusion: Exclusion Kat., DuMont, 1997
  • Michael Oren Worlds envisioned: Alighiero Boetti , Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mort de Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, artiste ivoirien, inventeur de l'alphabet bété , French , accessed on January 30, 2014
  2. ^ Contemporary And , accessed July 28, 2013.
  3. ↑ Johanna Maria Huck-Schade cyberday accessed on July 28, 2013
  4. ^ A b c Robert Fleck: Museum in Progress I think and I feel in art. Conversation with Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, accessed on July 28, 2013
  5. ↑ Katrin Bettina Müller: The dead who have become clouds ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved July 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.culturebase.net
  6. ^ National Museum of African Art: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, accessed on July 28, 2013
  7. ↑ african contemporary , accessed on July 28, 2013 (English).
  8. ↑ National Ivoryan alphabet Dream the End accessed on February 11, 2016 (English)
  9. ↑ Katrin Bettina Müller: The dead who have become clouds ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.culturebase.net
  10. ↑ Universes in Universe: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, accessed on July 28, 2013
  11. ↑ Richard Dorment: The Telegraph Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: A childlike world of goodness and color accessed on July 28, 2013 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Bouabré, Frédéric Bruly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bouabré, Bruly; Bruly, Frédéric; Cheik Nadro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ivorian painter and poet
DATE OF BIRTH 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Zéprégüé
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 2014
Place of death Abidjan , Ivory Coast