Ibrahim Ballo Painting

beautiful painting, imbued with a great strength of a young Malian painter who won prizes and exhibits in some French galleries we are beginning to see it appear in public sales dedicated to contemporary African art. (piasa, reindeer auction) very beautiful artist who by the combination of weaving and painting is really different from the body of contemporary African art the white line on the gray background on the right is not a claw but a part not covered with pigments The technique developed by Ibrahim Ballo associates painting with acrylic with cotton threads, playing with the ideograms of traditional Malian fabrics. The cotton threads tied to the surface of the canvas create a high relief. In a refined vocabulary, the artist thus gives grandeur to this ordinary material of ancestral artisanal value, and pays tribute to traditional weavers (the environment in which he grew up), in an increasingly digitized world. With poetic power, and an acute sense of color, the artist illustrates the malaise of a society through his series of paintings "Meditation". Seeking inner peace, his characters turn in on themselves, to protect themselves and cut themselves off from all emotional communication with the outside world, which is extremely violent in Mali. Ibrahim Ballo By Armelle Malvoisin in the daily life of art "Due to the fact that he grew up in a weaver's environment, his paintings are strongly dominated by weaving." In Mali, weaving is one of the most present and lively activities, although 'today this ancestral practice survives painfully, says the artist The presence of a weaver in a family or a village was a sign of union and solidarity. It is under a tree, during this activity, that the dilemmas were resolved. With their gradual disappearance, we are witnessing disunity, lack of solidarity and sharing, selfishness and other scourges such as violence and corruption, illegal immigration of young people. The artist realizes within the framework of the 6th International Meeting of Contemporary Art of Brazzaville, whose theme is `` I present to you my city '', a work which questions the behavior of the men vis-à-vis the rules which they fix This work reflects a persona demanding character which maintains the legend of an artist preferring to selfishness of self the altruism of creation, "Hassan NJOYA Art critic of Cameroon / Curator at ICONE, participant in the art critic workshop of the RIAC 2017, Brazzaville - Direction: Dakin Dagara, art historian.