As part of the sale devoted to Modern and Contemporary African Art on Wednesday 24 June 2020, PIASA, in partnership with Aspire Auction, is delighted to present a work by Senegalese artist Omar Ba.
After graduating from the National School of Fine Arts in Senegal in 2002 after three years of study, he went to Bonn, Germany to participate in a symposium on the language of colours. With his move to Geneva in 2003, the artist has been going back and forth and presenting his work in several exhibitions in Senegal.
Since his arrival in Geneva, Omar Ba has turned his back on abstract painting to devote himself to figurative and narrative painting. He uses a wide variety of techniques and materials (oil paint, Indian ink, gouache and pencil) and often highlights figurations with multiple interpretations against a dark background. African culture and issues related to power and authority are its main sources of inspiration.
His works call upon a rich iconography and a plural and hybrid bestiary. Several works present a blurring of the boundaries between human, animal and plant. His paintings show official portraits, a harmless and disturbing imaginary bestiary, hybrid beings half-man, half-beast. Fascinated by international news, he constantly revisits history to better understand what is happening around him. He is interested in the place of humans and animals; in the links between progress and nature and between tradition and modernity.
Omar Ba (born 1977, Senegal)
This Way is Not Easy 2, 2011
Oil, pencil and ink on corrugated cardboard
204 x 150 cm
In "This Way is Not Easy 2", the abundant iconography stages a plural and hybrid bestiary. The North/South relationship and current events on the African continent also feed his work, as this boat flanked by a red cross suggests. The work is estimated at between 25,000 and 35,000 euros.
During the 2000s, Omar Ba's work was the subject of several exhibitions, notably at the Templon Gallery in Paris and Brussels.
