Untitled Tête

Ivorian painter Aboudia draws on the political upheaval of his native country to conjure animatedly phantasmagorical visions in paint and crayon, invigorated with life and intensity. In Untitled Tête, 2014, a Basquiat-esque visage emerges from a marbled background of splashed acrylic, with subtle hints of violet, red and white playing off against the dominating hues of inky blue and black. Like the grief-stricken figures in Picasso’s Guernica, Aboudia’s Untitled Tête expresses something of the raw and visceral desperation of violence and adversity. The subject’s features are outlined in strong, graphic black lines, and his large cartoonish eyes are wide with fear; their ovoid forms echo his gritted and contorted mouth. The artist’s home city of Abidjan has been the site of ongoing violence and unrest since a post-electoral crisis in 2011 sparked a new civil war in the Ivory Coast. The crazed expression and frenzied palimpsest paintwork of the present work suggest a vision of a man surround by chaos, capturing a sense of strife and conflict with urgent vitality. Striving to give a crucial voice to inhabitants suppressed by war and revolution, Aboudia has proclaimed, ‘I’m an ambassador of the children – they do writings on the wall, their wishes, their fears, I’m doing the same on my canvas. I’m like a megaphone for these children’.