Figures

This series of 7 paintings is a tribute to Seydou Keïta, who photographed Bamako society for many years. While browsing in the library, I stumbled across a book of his photographs and was immediately fascinated by the skillful staging and the beauty of the people portrayed.
The pictures are black and white, but in my mind's eye, the colors hidden behind the different shades of gray were immediately clear. So
I painted the people in color.
But there was more to it than only superficial beauty.
The following is written on Keïta's website:
"Seydou Keïta's photographs eloquently portray Bamako society during its era of transition from a cosmopolitan French colony to an independent capital."
It was precisely the tension of this era of transition, the change, the striving for a future full of possibilities that a part of me could already sense on first viewing of his photographs. In my opinion, the mood of his works fits perfectly into the current canon of voices of decolonisation we hear today. He is a black man protraying black people this is for me a powerfull act of rebellion and a way of taking authorship of his own representation and future.