Cheikhou Ba Senegalese
Biographie
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Au commencement (In the beginning), 2016
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L’anonyme, 2016
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Matête mamaison (My head, my house), 2016
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Migration III, 2016
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Moi, j’ai pas fait un rêve (Me, I have not yet dreamed), 2016
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Vivre et laisser mourir (Live and Let die), 2016
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Tomorrow #006, 2015
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Tomorrow #007, 2015
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Tomorrow #010, 2015
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Tomorrow #014, 2015
Cheikhou Ba lives in Dakar and trained at the Dakar Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts before specialising in ceramics at Geneva University of Art and Design. The Tomorrow series are an existentialist take on the human condition; behind a false innocence, Cheikhou explores forms of the Abject through the visual language of fantasy popular films. In his research, Cheikhou Ba explores different aspects of the human condition. The notion of respect for individual and collective rights and liberties takes the form of a ritual in the artwork titled Marcher sur des œufs (Walking on Eggshells, 2012). In this installation, hundreds of white ceramic eggs are scattered across the floor.
The ambivalence of human nature is a recurring theme in Cheikhou Ba’s work. In 2008 he bought a batch of twenty small stuffed animals with the aim to utilise them one day. Substituting these for human beings is in direct continuation with the canvases of half-human half-animal forms which he has been painting since he left the École Nationale des Arts (National Arts School) in Dakar in 2000. These various creatures are the base of his formal and conceptual research considering human nature through its multiple incessant and ever ambiguous transformations. In his artworks that feature asexual characters, man is perhaps a woman, an animal or a spirit. But this is still an anthropomorphic being with a grimacing face of defiance, sorrow or irony. Whether it is through drawing, painting or sculpture, Cheikhou Ba explores the principle of metamorphosis with the will to recreate the primordial equation inherent in the esoteric philosophies of the people from Sub-Saharan Africa: the sum of everything is equal to this undefinable unknown on which everything relies. In his work, the spirit is conceived through matter and takes the form of an artwork. All his artworks with their very researched aesthetic represent the process of mutation of an individual, whether that is the physical appearance or the personality.
Œuvres
Expositions
