Art_Africa_2016_02_

REVIEWS

such as a mop and strainer. His precise compositions render the mundane sculptural.

Gbré was born in France and lives and works in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. In his untitled

work of 2013, Gbré travelled through Benin, France, Israel, Mali, Senegal and Togo

to create an installation of 63 colour digital c-prints of photographs that were taken

between 2009 and 2013. Each image varies in subject matter, angle and location, but

they are interwoven into a grid-iron pattern delineating the geographical lines of his

existence. Every fragment contains a diverse reality. TV (2012), for example, is a highly-

stylised example where we see a television placed on a tree trunk and, while enraptured

in the absurdity of an electrical appliance in the outdoors, in the background we view

the Senegalese seascape.

Self-taught artist and photographer Niang was raised between Ivory Coast, Senegal and

France. Some of the images from her series, ‘At The Wall,’ have also recently appeared at

Stevenson Gallery (Cape Town and Johannesburg). These images were realised through

a taxi window, while driving in Dakar. Of this body of work, Le peuple du mur #6 (2014)

contains the bright colours and movement associated with her highly balanced reverence

for form and composition. In an imaginative way, the horizontal lines of complimentary-

coloured slabs create a dizzying effect as audience members are invited to traverse the

zebra-crossing. This montage of colour and line is almost imitative of the effects of the

sun in an urban site – where three men render the movement of the everyday visible.

The visual statements of Chagas, Gbré and Niang provide a subtle commentary on the

contradictions of the continent many call ‘home.’ The colonial interiors, monumental

civic buildings, political murals and discarded objects are young and old characters in the

historic narrative of our times and they demand the limelight, even if only for a moment.

Rather than providing purely structural compositions, ‘The Lay of the Land’ builds on

the archive interwoven with its own materials that question the durability of the structures

on show. The architecture of these cities house the dualities that continue to both plague

and enliven the continent from where we continuously come and go.

Javiera Luisina Cadiz Bedini is an assistant curator, researcher and writer, born

in Chile and raised in Argentina and South Africa. She obtained an MA in Art

History, Performance and Literature from the University of Siena in Italy and

holds postgraduate and undergraduate degrees in Art History and Drama from

the University of Cape Town.

‘The Lay of the Land: New Photography from Africa’ continues through 16 January 2016 at The

Walther Collection Project Space New York.

THE LAY OF THE LAND: NEW PHOTOGRAPHY FROM AFRICA / JAVIERA LUISINA CADIZ BEDINI 3/4 ARTAFRICA