For writer and philosopher Jean Godefroy Bidima, the paradigm of the Full has often been employed in the evaluation of traditional African artworks; Full underscores the notion of continuity, immutability, sacred characterisation and belonging to specific ‘African’ or ethnic codes. However, he insists that the paradigm of Empty is equally relevant: some objects and sculptures are incomplete, transgressive, and create a passage from tradition and community to the realm of art. It can be argued that Diallo and Somian’s strategies are expressed in ‘a space between’ African and global, and between design and art; that the paradigms of the Full/Empty that Bidima refers to give a relevant frame in which to analyse the works.
When Cheick Diallo began his project (using nylon thread imported into in Mali in large quantities for the fishing indus-try, applying local traditional techniques of weaving) it was intially out of necessity in a Malian economic context of near scarcity. Engaging local skills with locally sourced material has become a foundation of the global thinking on sustaina-bility, making Diallo’s work readable beyond the local into the global. The precision finish of the pieces also seemingly obscure the hand-made and traditional technique used in making them, and situate the pieces in the realm of internation-al design in addition to ‘craft’ and ‘local’. Paradoxically the Full characteristics of the works is expressed by the Empty volumes that are delineated by the nylon threads, further emphasised by the intense colours of magenta, indigo and black. Diallo uses a vocabulary of exaggerat-ed shapes; curvy or geometrical, or twisted, which are read by the viewers as more sculptural than functional. It can be argued that it is only through the very connotations of sculpture that Diallo plays with the paradigm of the Full and points to the African origin of the making.
Jean Servais Somian alludes directly to the coastal region of West Africa, where he works when using the natural resource of coconut palm trees trunks. As with Diallo’s work, paradoxically the voids Somian carves into the trunks (reclaiming a traditional skill so difficult it has virtually disappeared from the region) allow the natural material to further express its qualities: the density of the wood, its rich bark marked by growth and trauma, its immense length and curves produced by the tropical conditions. If these give aesthetic interest to the works, they also participate in powerfully expressing the natural origin of the material. Here we are back to the paradigm of the Full, a reference to an awe-inspiring African nature. Somian transgresses this paradigm by employing brightly coloured lacquer in its indents, by the addition of contrasting shapes and materials – drawers, mirrors and buttons – playfully indicating the pieces’ function as cabinets or benches. However, in calling his vertical pieces Les Demoiselles, he alludes to the powerful sexual quality of the works, jokingly referring back to Picasso showing how art history also informs his practice.
Diallo says: ‘I am not in the slightest bit interested in design if it is merely redoing what already exists.’ Indeed, his practice created a break with established clichés about making on the African continent. With the likes of Diallo and Somian, the probing of design’s very borders are inherent to the practicing of new design on the African continent.
