As suggested by "ACT2" - borrowing the terminology used in the titles of Saïdou Dicko's works - the four-hands project bringing together Saïdou Dicko and Hyacinthe Ouattara forms the second act of the exhibition La poésie du lien. Held at AFIKARIS Gallery from March to May 2021, the exhibition presented a conversation between the worlds of the two artists whose art, brought together in one place, met on paper in a joint work. This second act now focuses on the crossroads of their imaginations and manifests itself in the physical space as a meeting place.
On the walls, a body of works on paper by the two artists unfolds. They arise as hybridizations of Ouattara's cosmic abstractions and Dicko's poetic shadows. The drawing is initiated by one artist and continued by the other. Inspired by the textile backgrounds of Dicko's painted photographs, Ouattara's gestures and collages echo them. Black silhouettes appear, adapting to the irregularities of their environment to explore caves and valleys. In La poésie du lien. Eloge des racines, the natural, fluid forms combined with the jerky back-and-forth movement of the pencil follow the shapes of the children accompanied by undulating lianas.
A tent stands in the centre of the room. Ouattara's bright red wool and fabric mingle with Dicko's black and blue plastic to create a special shelter. Inside, on the first screen, Saraka ('offering' or 'sacrifice' in Bambara language) (2022) is playing. The hands of anonymous people donating textile scraps - once shirts, dresses or scarves - in a sign of offering, are followed by the hands of Ouattara, who, in a masterly dance, stitches together these fragments of past moments with a red thread. On a second screen, Gariibu ('beggar' in Fulfulde language) (2008) captures a moment of complicity between Dicko and three young beggars. Through these images, the artist wanted to show the reality of these children: "They are children like any others. They laugh, they play and they are happy despite the very hard life they lead."
The tailor-made setting and the works around it, all the result of a collaboration between the two artists, reflect this 'poetry of the link'. Ultimately, how are we linked to each other while at the same time being distant from one another in both the physical and immaterial worlds?
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