Born in 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Aboudia - whose real name is Abdoulaye Diarrassouba - now lives and works between his hometown and New York. Marked by the vicissitudes of his country's recent political history, his painting confidently brings together several pictorial traditions. Today she is part of the one that counts as much on the African continent as in the rest of the world.
Aboudia is being spotted by international critics in 2011 thanks to her works documenting the violence of the Ivorian crisis. In 2010, he was in Abidjan when riots broke out following the presidential elections. While many intellectuals and artists decided to flee the civil war, Aboudia chose to stay and work despite the danger.
Result : 11700 € on 11.7.2019 | Result : 36400 € on 11.14.2018 |
Aboudia's painting is full of children, but they are very different from the photogenic kids in the idealized images of Africa. These children are painted in a naive and brutal way. Their faces are in a permanent state of surprise, not yet bored by the vision of ordinary scenes of violence. Aboudia paints in the nouchi style, a mixture of the street styles he makes his own, a source of escape in response to the deprivations found on the walls of the neighbourhoods around Abidjan.
A graduate of the Centre Technique des Arts Appliqués in Bingerville, Aboudia draws on the iconographic vocabulary of street art, exemplified in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States by Jean Michel Basquiat. The production of the Ivorian artist reflects, in fact, his cosmopolitanism. It also constitutes a bridge between contemporary Western aesthetics and the problems of a rapidly changing African society.
 Result : 35100 € on 11.7.2019 | Result : 19500 € on 11.14.2018 |
A painting such as The God, produced in 2011 when fighting raged just a few metres from his studio, is emblematic. In the centre of the composition, a young man reaches for the sky. The execution is reminiscent of the schematism of children's drawings, which were elevated to the ranks of works in the 20th century, particularly with the Art Brut initiated by Jean Dubuffet. The rapidity of the brushstrokes, visible for example in the treatment of the shapes and the drips, is palpable. It testifies to the urgency of painting, therefore of saying. This painting, like all the canvases produced at that time, is a cry. On either side, inscriptions populate this eminently symbolic interior where photographs, pieces of comic strips, television sets and traditional African sculptures stand side by side. A link between distant regions of the world, Aboudia's work also makes it possible to clash dissimilar temporalities.
Result : 21896 € le 6.9.2016 |  Result : 7150 € on 11.7.2019 |
Tighter than this composition, a certain number of paintings only show the faces of characters. This is the case of Untitled (47). In this mixed technique on canvas, the eyes, as exorbitant, illustrate the astonishment while taking as witness the spectator that we are.
Aboudia's work can be found in many collections, including the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, USA, and the Tiroche DeLeon collection in Israel.
