Born - 1981. Burkina Faso

Based in - France 

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Hyacinthe Ouattara is a mainly self-taught artist.
After several experiences with workshops, with a background in live-model drawing, Hyacinthe Ouattara first pictured the human body in a dreamlike, ghostly and childish way before entering his bowels and concentrating his work on the anatomy of cellular tissues through «human cartographies».

Matter, texture and colours are of great importance in his pictorial work. Sometimes a patchwork appears. His drawings, meanwhile, are spontaneous, gestural and question the human being. His installations often play with suspensions, questioning the balance and the imbalance. They are as well a reflection on the memory and, since he focuses on the textile, on an organic aspect. The textile also allows him to question the ambivalence between appearance and disappearance, representation and intimacy, identity in the broad sense. His sculptures in twisted and knotted textiles take up this obsession with the organic and examine the concept of links.

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He participated in exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Dakar, Ouagadougou, Accra, Luxembourg, Kalgoorlie, etc.

Exploration and experimentation characterize the art of Hyacinthe Ouattara, who is not limited to one medium. He sees his practice as echoing the world: an infinite and undetermined space. Listening to his senses and his environment, his creations spontaneously arise from his feelings. He analyses: “It is for me like a call, a necessity to choose a specific medium depending on what I want to express.” His multifaceted artworks reflect the emergency he feels, compelling him to experiment everything, to explore everything, aware that his time is limited. Thus, through his works close to abstraction, Hyacinthe Ouattara materialises a thought as philosophical as sociological, expressing his sensibility.

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Photo and text: Courtesy of Afikaris Gallery

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