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Lot Essay
Hailing from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Armand Boua primarily works using acrylic and tar applied onto flattened cardboard boxes, which he tears, scratches and marks. His stark, visceral visions are inevitably influenced by the disputed 2010 general election in Abidjan, and the violence and chaos which ensued. Street children are a recurrent motif in his work: during this period, scores of children would flock to cities seeking work, often finding themselves in appalling conditions. Boua regards these children as a forgotten generation and uses his work to memorialise them. Through the repeated addition and subtraction of textural layers, his subjects shift in and out of focus, appearing before the viewer like anonymous vestiges of memory.
In Untitled, lot 130, our eyes are drawn to the angelic children front and left. A shrouded silhouette of another child sits in the background, his face shrouded and gloomy, hinting—perhaps—at the trauma that lies beneath the smiles.
Untitled, lot 131, shows the head of a boy who appears to be turning away from something, almost cowering with eyes wincing. The work is infused with movement and energy, like a fleeting snapshot.
Boua’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Saatchi Collection and the Franck-Suss Collection. He has exhibited at the Dak’Art Biennale 2010 as well as featuring in Pangaea II at the Saatchi Gallery in 2015. He has also exhibited at the Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Norway. He represented Ivory Coast in the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. He is represented by Galerie Cecile Fakhoury, Abidjan and Jack Bell Gallery, London.
In Untitled, lot 130, our eyes are drawn to the angelic children front and left. A shrouded silhouette of another child sits in the background, his face shrouded and gloomy, hinting—perhaps—at the trauma that lies beneath the smiles.
Untitled, lot 131, shows the head of a boy who appears to be turning away from something, almost cowering with eyes wincing. The work is infused with movement and energy, like a fleeting snapshot.
Boua’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Saatchi Collection and the Franck-Suss Collection. He has exhibited at the Dak’Art Biennale 2010 as well as featuring in Pangaea II at the Saatchi Gallery in 2015. He has also exhibited at the Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Norway. He represented Ivory Coast in the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022. He is represented by Galerie Cecile Fakhoury, Abidjan and Jack Bell Gallery, London.