Fabric as paint.

With all the war news coming from Mali I thought it was timely to remember that Mali had a very active cultural scene. Last time I went which was for the Bamako Photography Biennale in 2011 I visitsd the studio of Abdoulaye Konate, a well- established artist in Mali whose works have been shown extensively internationally. I have to say there is nothing better than going to visit an artist in his own environment.

I was part of a small group of women mostly curators from the US, most of whom knew his work. I did not, so it was all a discovery. Born in Diré, Mali, he obtained his diploma from the National Institute of Art in Bamako and from the Higher Institute of Art of Havana, Cuba. Trained as a painter, he eventually turned away from paint to working solely with textiles and making very large-scale works. Paints were hard to find and Mali had its own traditional techniques that Konaté found rich in expressive potential. He uses textiles, gris-gris, found objects and makes powerful sociopolitical statements in his huge cloth panels.

We climbed up to the second floor of his house to his studio where we were welcomed by a couple of his assistants. Against the back wall was hanging a diptych: “Croix de Sang”, “Croix de Lumiere” 2010.The panels are made out of stitched thin strips of colored cloths layered on top of each other and carefully arranged in a gradation from black to white with strips of contrasting color bursting through arranged in the shape of a cross. The effect was dramatic and achieved great optical effect.    Konaté sees color in black and indeed the depth of these panels, which appear at once austere and rich attest to his approach. There is something Rothko like about these works in terms of depth of color, and spiritual meaning. Using the same layering and gradation technique he turns to more vibrant colors like blue, here the symbol for the Touaregs in the North. These works are his most recent works and draw on the striking plumage of the guinea fowl. These birds appear in Malian tales, legends, theater and literature.

Konate runs a studio and his assistants are the ones who stitch each strip to the backdrop cloth panel. They unrolled for us to see a panel still in the process of being made. It revealed the construction method. Long horizontal lines were drawn working as guidelines for the layering of the strips.

Konate’s panels are bold visually, most of the time abstract though at times he will include figures, which are flattened, abstracted.  He will also include gris-gris, which are amulets that are used for protection against evil. When used extensively these huge white drops made out of cloth create a sculptural effect. Konaté addresses important socio political themes in his works. Some of his major themes have been environmental issues, Life under dictatorship, AIDS, the relationship between power and religion, genocide.

This piece is called Bosnia, Angola, Rwanda. Konaté tells us that it represents the wounded writing a message in blood. He bought children’s clothes in the market, most of them second hand clothes coming from the West and gathered them together laying them down on sand.

This panel is called Asalme and speaks of what Konaté describes as the biometrique generation. The same body is reproduced in different sizes. The reality of immigration is the underlying subject.

Abdoulaye Konaté’s work was just shown at the Revue Noire in Paris in 2012, at Iniva in London, 2012, Documenta 12, 2007, Africa Remix to name a few. He also won the Artes Mundi prize in 2008. I wonder what new work will come out of the military crisis in Northern Mali.