BIO
Frédéric
Bruly Bouabré, was born in 1923 in Zéprégüé,
Côte dIvoire.
The origin of all of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré
s work stems from a revelatory experience: on March 11,
1948, the heavens opened up before my eyes and seven
colorful suns described a circle of beauty around their Mother-Sun,
I became Cheik Nadro: He who does not forget.'
From then on Bruly Bouabré tackled every field of knowledge
and collected his research in manuscripts about arts and traditions,
poetry, tales, religion, esthetics, and philosophy, revealing
himself to be an astonishing thinker, poet, encyclopedist, creator.
Searching for a way to preserve and transmit the knowledge of
the Bété people, as well as the knowledge of the
entire world, he invented an alphabet of 448 monosyllabic pictograms
to represent phonetic syllables. This endeavor earned Bouabré
the legendary reputation of being another Champollion, in reference
to the great scholar and linguist Jean-Paul Champollion (1790-1832),
who discovered the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Bouabrés alphabet, which can transcribe all human
sounds, reflects the essence of his thought: to achieve universality
and to unite mankind.
In
the 1970s, Bouabré started to transfer his thoughts to
hundreds of small drawings in postcard format, using a ballpoint
pen and colour crayons. These drawings, gathered under the title
of Connaissance du Monde (World Knowledge), form an encyclopedia
of universal knowledge and experience.
Other
projects, such as Readings from Signs Observed in Oranges
(1988), serve as visionary records of divination.
For Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, his drawings
are representation of everything that is revealed or concealedsigns,
divine thoughts, dreams, myths, the sciences, traditionsand
he views his role as an artist as a redemptive calling. He has
stated: Now that we are recognized as artists, our
duty is to organize into a society, and in such a way to create
a framework for discussion and exchange among those who acquire
and those who create. From that could arise a felicitous world
civilisation.
source:
Africultures.com; First Run Icarus Films; Contemporary African
Art Collection
FR