When 10-to-16-year-old Malians look through the lens of a camera, what do they see? A boy in an oversized Dallas Cowboys T-shirt smiles, one arm slung over a donkey's neck.
Amid a crowd of children, a girl grasps a long wooden pestle and grinds shea nuts into shea butter. In the shade of a tree, a man naps outside on a woven mat, his radio beside him. An old woman sits on a woven mat, an arm resting on her knee.
These uncommonly intimate scenes of daily Malian life appear in a collection of 49 black-and-white photographs by 22 children entitled “Visual Griots of Mali: An Exhibition of Photography by African Youth” on display at the World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery, 220 Vesey Street, September 7 - November 25.
http://www.aed.org/visualgriots/exhibit/index.htm
The World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery
Co-presented by the Museum for African Art and
Arts World Financial Center
Organized by the Academy for Educational Development
Free
September 7 - November 25
REFLECTING ON NIGERIA: NEW INSTALLATIONS BY NNENNA OKORE
Nnenna Okore, in her work, has sought to marry the uniqueness of the imagery of her childhood in southeastern Nigeria with object/images which hold a resonance for all of us: children playing, people working; life in its inexorable cycle from beginning to decline. Her installations are imbued with a tactile reality, rendered all the more “real” by their inspiration growing from, and incorporating, found objects.
Nnenna Okore describes El Anatsui as a friend, an inspiration and a mentor. She initially studied under him for four years at the University of Nukka. What followed was her individual growth as an artist with El as her mentor and employer. Nnenna had the not inconsequential task of being in charge of El’s studio. She also worked with him to identify discarded mental and other objects for his new sculpture. What is most to celebrate is that as strong an influence as El Anatsui has been in Nnenna Okore’s artistic life, her style is her own. Here we have two powerful statements in a simple fact: El Anatsui has an artist progeny and this progeny, Nnenna Okore, has developed an independent way of expressing herself.
Contemporary African Art Gallery
330 West 108th St, #6 (at Riverside Drive)
(212) 662-8799 (212) 749-8848
www.contempafricanart.com
THE OPENING
Friday October 19, 2007
7 – 10 p.m. and by appointment thereafter
Visual Griots of Mali: