Flanitokeke statues Drawing

At one point you hesitate. Entering this world isn’t as insignificant as it seems. In fact, to put it simply, some people don’t come out again. They’re stuck up in the branches one foot in and one foot out. Of course Sophie Testa doesn’t mention this to you. But her painting says it all. It lies between here and elsewhere, the hidden part and that of the present. Mystical? The painter currently lives at Marseilles in an adorable house at the bottom of the garden, with plants, wooden furniture… How can we talk about her career without mentioning her family ties with Russia? Her grandparents were painters and her father is an architect. Africa in particular, where she arrived at the age of two months at Brazzaville and turned into a little black child. And the perpetuity of the masks already surrounding her in the house and in the streets. Then Burkina Faso from 1986 to 1989 during the Sankara period. “My return to France was painful and disappointing. I wanted to return to my country without having to go on a pilgrimage to my childhood but meet and do something with people instead. I awaited a sign for 25 years”. “This research is both the work of an anthropologist, therefore containing references and circumscribed, and that of an artist which introduces a certain amount of freedom” Sophie Testa The sign. It’s a sort of tilt of one balance and the creation of another. In 2012 in Quebec, Claude de Guise introduced her to the artists (and twins) Ousseni and Assane Ouattara. African art can’t be summarized by masks, but it associates them because of their consanguinity over the course of time. The paintings are the spiritual windows that echo before, after and during… She mixes and associates the initial magical ingredients with those that come with the relative contingencies of life. Sophie’s work will from then on be in keeping with this spirit. Her research is both the work of an anthropologist, therefore containing references and circumscribed, and that of an artist which introduces a certain amount of freedom. A work of art which makes European anthropologists go mad whilst African artists jump for joy: this lady is their sister! This kind of encounter rarely works out. One often hears about thieving embezzlements and plundering. Between 2007 and 2014 Sophie studied two Masters of Art on Aboriginal and American Indian art. Which is to say, a scientifical job.