A vision of 7 suns led a self-taught Ivoirian artist to draw the everyday and the holy - WEAA
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In 1948, the late Ivoirian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré had a vision that would change his life. On his way to work as a civil servant in the colonial navy in Dakar, then the capital of French West Africa, he said he saw "seven colored suns" creating a "circle of beauty around their 'mother-sun.' "
The experience, he said, inspired him to begin making art as a way to document the lives of his Bété people, an ethnic group in the Ivory Coast known for being fierce hunters and warriors. More than 1,000 of his writings and drawings are on display until August 13 as part of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound, an exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It is MoMA's first solo exhibition of an artist from West Africa.
Bouabré, who died in 2014 at the age of 90, used crayons, ballpoint pen and colored pencil to make simple and colorful illustrations on materials such as discarded cardboard and hair product packaging. He drew everyday objects from his Bété culture like pots, animals and cigarettes; pictographs for the Bété language, which did not have a writing system; and images gleaned from his spiritual visions.
Despite his visionary inspiration, Bouabré says he was merely drawing the world as he saw it. "I do not work from my imagination," Bouabré once said. "I observe, and what I see delights me."
NPR talks to Smooth Nzewi, the curator of the exhibit at MoMA, about Bouabré's life and work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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