Frédéric
BRULY BOUABRÉ (1923) [view
available works from this artist]
Frédéric
Bruly Bouabré was born in 1923 in Zéprégüé,
Côte d’Ivoire.
The origin of all of Frédérick 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. Bouabré’s 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 concealed—signs,
divine thoughts, dreams, myths, the sciences, traditions—and
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
Selected
Exhibitions
Frédéric
Bruly Bouabré GALLERY
