Environment - Art & Politics in Africa

Homme Nature II (“Nature Man II”)

Abdoulaye Konate
Malian, b. 1953

Homme Nature II, 2015
Mixed media on fabrics, 120 cm x 120 cm

Blain Southern Gallery, London

Using textiles in his work, Konate often reveal attitudes around economic and social change in Mali, and Homme Nature II is no exception. Lined with vibrant fabrics of green, blue, and yellow is a uniformly patterned background of rectangles that clashes with a foreground of dark red colors and divergent brushstrokes. Through the background, which appear a sky and a horizon, Konate shows a natural environment that is uniform and clean. In the foreground, though, this natural environment is tainted by red paint resembling blood, where atop stands a figure with a chest wound. While the cause of the man’s wound is unclear, the image focuses on how his immediate environment that is stained with bloodshed and strife contrasts a natural environment of peace and beauty. It can also be interpreted that the very things that afflict the man, such as violence or political unrest (subjects that Konate has addressed in other artworks such as Dessin d’un evenement politique, “Drawing of a Political Event”), are taking away the beauty of the natural world.

Dylan Bess ’21

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Lutte contre les moustiques (“Battle against Mosquitos”)

Cheri Samba
Zairian, b. 1956

Lutte contre les moustiques (Battle against Mosquitos), 1999
Acryllic on canvas, 90 x 109 cm

Tang Teaching Museum (2011, current location unknown)

In Samba’s painting, which resembles the style of political cartoon, a couple fights off a swarm of mosquitos surrounding their bedroom. The man says to his partner, “Dear, you kill those on the right while I fight those to the left,” to which she replies, “I’m am, my love. I already killed two, but it seems they keep getting up.” The two try to kill the mosquitos surrounding them, but the mosquitos are seemingly invincible. In Samba’s home of the DRC, the heating climate is proliferating populations of mosquitos that carry malaria, one of the country’s leading causes of deaths. Decades have passed with citizens pleading the government to act, as it is not an issue individuals can take on themselves. The painting’s caption says “In Africa, malaria kills more than AIDS does, especially children. The malaria virus, referred to as ‘the mosquitos,’ seems to be more powerful than the whites and blacks that live in Africa.” Samba’s incorporation of the characters (one of whom was modeled after a 1989 anti-AIDS postal stamp) and the text raises calls for action against malaria. The heating climate in the DRC provides more suitable conditions for the populations of mosquitos that carry the virus, and this painting shows how issues with the environment directly affect the health of those who live in it.

Dylan Bess ’21
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Stadia II

Julie Mehretu
Ethiopian, b. 1970

Stadia II, 2004.
Ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Stadia II, a painting from a series of three, fills its canvas with abstraction of color, line, and movement. Mehretu uses ink and acrylic to create a variety of lines, allowing some lines to be bolded by form and color and some to appear, as Mehretu explains, as fossils. Mehretu considers her paintings “psycho-geographies,” where exist a dichotomy of natural and man-made elements. In Stadia II, bright colors that represent flags and lights of a stadium accompany darker, “fossil-like” lines and natural colors (like the beige canvas itself) that resemble soil or ground on which the man-made objects stand. One interpretation may highlight that the contrast of the dulled lines and indistinct forms with the bright colors and bold forms suggest that, as the urban landscape consumes the resource from nature, the natural landscape falls dull. Like Abdalouye Konate’s Homme Nature II, Stadia II can give light to the human impact on the environment.

Dylan Bess ’22
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Blackened Explosion

George Osodi
Nigerian, b. 1974

Blackened Explosion, circa 2005
Photograph

Oil Rich Niger Delta 2003-2007, collection of George Osodi

This photograph from George Osodi’s Oil Rich Niger collection shows the burning aftermath of an oil rig explosion on the Niger Delta. Nigeria is the leading oil producer in the continent, and its inhabitants have consequently lived amid much oil-related conflict. Despite of the beginning of the amnesty process in Nigeria in 2009, many local factions feel that the root causes for the conflict, such as the lack of local sovereignty over the sources of oil, remain unaddressed. Militia violence continues to injure the environment and its people, and the delta that nourishes nearby communities is here engulfed in flames and polluted with hazardous byproducts. By capturing this scene, Osodi highlights the devastation experienced by the environment itself.

Dylan Bess ’21

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Untitled

George Osodi,
Nigerian, b. 1974

Untitled, circa 2015
Photograph

Waterfronts, collection of George Osodi

This photograph presents a common issue in Osodi’s work: human suffering along the Niger Delta. This photograph, taken through a crack of a wooden hut, shows the living conditions of habitants along the Niger Delta. It gives the viewer a place in the photo. The ground, riddled with waste and grayed with ash, highlights the hardships faced by communities along the Niger Delta as a result of oil extraction and resulting conflict. Many homes have been left in turmoil from violence from militant factions fighting to gain sovereignty over local resources, and Osodi presents here the damage that exploitation and conflict have on the environment and its communities.

Dylan Bess ’21
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Homme Nature II (“Nature Man II”)

Lutte contre les moustiques (“Battle against Mosquitos”)

Stadia II

Blackened Explosion

Untitled

BEDROOM MASKS

Face Walker

Bandaged Conscience

Omweeso Gwa Mululu

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Bowdoin College – Brunswick, ME