Through life-sized animal statues and vibrant, expressive paintings, Oumar Ball shares stories of his homeland, wishing to offer a glimpse into the lesser-known Africa. The just-opened 15th Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, Senegal features several of his intriguing sculptures.
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00:00It's taken artist Oumar Bal months to build, and now this intriguing metal structure is
00:05on show at the Dakra Biennale in Senegal.
00:10This is the sketch of my installation.
00:14It's a five-square-meter installation, a reflection of the world we live in today.
00:19The world is chaos.
00:20As an artist, I'm just bearing testimony.
00:26A metaphor he often illustrates using these life-size animal sculptures.
00:32Humans have characters that resemble these creatures.
00:38There's something mysterious about vultures.
00:40They're scavengers.
00:41They're weird.
00:42I think it reflects the other side of the human being, and it's this side of the human
00:46being that affects the world, the dark side.
00:53And Oumar scavenges the streets to find materials needed for his animal creations.
01:00I use iron sheet because to build my sculptures, I knot, I tie, and I sew.
01:07I think it's lucky to be born in an environment where there's nothing, where there's no big
01:15fine art store to buy brushes and everything.
01:23So that's what's instilled in me, the strength to express myself with what's around me.
01:28Originally from the south of the country, Oumar grew up by the river on the border with
01:32Senegal.
01:33That's where his father, also an artist, passed on his passion for creating things.
01:41Like the children of my village at the time, we didn't have the toys that were made by
01:46machines.
01:49So my dad would make me toys.
01:54I took over and started making my own toys.
02:01Over time, these toys became my works of art.
02:08But in his teens, expectations from his family and his faith forced Oumar to abandon sculpture.
02:16When I was 15, I was sculpting more and more because I wasn't going to school anymore.
02:28And my parents were bothered by people saying, listen, you've got to tell him to stop sculpting.
02:38It's frowned upon in our religion.
02:43That then led him to pick up a brush and to tell the story of his daily life and his country.
02:48For example, I use art to pay tribute to my ancestors.
02:52It's this whole identity, my land, my country that I try to show.
02:56It's the beautiful faces, the happy people, the little-known Africa we don't talk about.
03:02A vision of the world that he loves to paint on these large-format canvases that offer
03:06him more freedom for expression.
03:10It's as if I were swimming in the canvas.
03:16I don't paint with the easel.
03:20I like to paint on the ground.
03:23When I paint, I walk on the canvas.
03:27For hours, Oumar superimposes materials on the canvas as if he were sculpting.
03:35I like texture because I'm basically a sculptor who paints.
03:38I like to make people want to touch my work, even if they don't dare to touch it.
03:43It feels like they've touched it thanks to the material.
03:47But while Oumar is now an artist of international renown, he still has ambitions to be better
03:52known and hopes to one day open his own gallery to help achieve this dream.