Faroukou Ndoukouo Oumarou

Anthropologist PhD, Adviser approved in traditional Bantu Art, graduated from Academy of Fine Arts, Professor of schools and colleges, cultural Manager."¢ Lecturer in Anthropology Consultant for purchase at the Museum of Arts and Traditions of Gabon (project design studies and evaluations of projects),


ARTIST PROFILE



Our works are part of a practice of anthropology: conception of the Universe or cosmos in Black Africa societies (animist cultures). The belief that nothing is inanimate, the world being a great living entity. Our universe is not only inhabited or populated by spirits, it has a soul that we could call "cosmic soul": All beings are united and part of that soul. Thanks to this unique order of things, man is also the parent of the spirits as the parent of the animal, plant and mineral world. All these entities being linked in a system whose engine is energy, power. The distributions or redistribution of these forces being the basis of myths and interpretations of phenomena the universe: The Totem, the twins, the birth, the trances, the death, the sickness, all these social residues of fear that are at the origin of African beliefs. All this gives a special place to art in these societies: work of the spirit...

THE BREATH OF REMEMBRANCE

THE ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF AFRICAN PEOPLES


The contribution made by African art to Western artistic production in the 20th century was so profound that some have compared it with the Greco-Roman influence on Renaissance culture. Expressing their rejection of academicism and the values it conveyed, numerous artists turned their gaze towards Africa, fascinated by the power and beauty of the masks and reliquaries seen for the first time in the West following the great journeys of exploration into a continent only just beginning to deliver up its mysteries. As early as 1907, for example, Picasso described African art in the following terms: “[...] these masks, all these objects that men had made in a sacred, magical design to serve as intermediaries between themselves and the unknown, hostile forces which surrounded them in an attempt to overcome their fright by giving them colour and form. And then I understood that this was the very sense of painting.”

Mysterious and fascinating, African art is also characterized by a surprising diversity as evidenced by the works of the many ethic groups who, from Guinea to Kenya, have enriched it with the fruits of their dialogue with their gods and the spirits ...