Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, 1923–2014
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré was born in 1923 in Zéprégüé, Côte d’Ivoire. The origin of his life’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 that moment, Bouabré devoted himself to documenting all fields of knowledge. He compiled manuscripts on arts and traditions, poetry, tales, religion, aesthetics, and philosophy — revealing himself as a thinker, poet, encyclopedist, and creator. Seeking a way to preserve and transmit the knowledge of the Bété people, and ultimately the world, he invented an alphabet of 448 monosyllabic pictograms capable of transcribing all human sounds. This monumental achievement earned him comparisons to Champollion, the scholar who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs.
In the 1970s, Bouabré began transferring his ideas into hundreds of small postcard-sized drawings using ballpoint pen and colored pencils. These works, gathered under the title *Connaissance du Monde* (World Knowledge), form an encyclopedia of universal experience.
Other projects, such as *Readings from Signs Observed in Oranges* (1988), serve as visionary records of divination.
For Bouabré, his drawings represent everything revealed or concealed — signs, divine thoughts, dreams, myths, sciences, traditions. He viewed the artist’s role as a redemptive calling, stating: “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 civilization.”
source: Africultures.com; First Run Icarus Films; Contemporary African Art Collection