SENI AWA CAMARA - PURE "ART BRUT"

CAMARA 2008 NEW WORKS AT THE NERART GALLERY

Born c. 1945, Bignona, Senegal
Lives and works in Bignona, Senegal

Seni Awa Camara’s outlook on life is based on revealed truths, on timeless stories, on the world of human beings and the objects that surround them, and on her status as a Ouolof woman with an obligation to unite past and present. She was raised by her mother, who was also a potter, and who taught her sculpture when she was still a child. She had two twin brothers, and all three retreated into the forests of Casamançe to obey a mysterious and divine initiation. “We were sheltered by God’s spirits, who taught us to work with clay.” Camara models clay and gives shape to stories, events, and feelings that have been dreamt, revealed, or created from fantasy. She has gathered a substantial number of her sculptures in her home which could be described as a “theater without a stage,” full of objects and human figures placed according to size—ranging from examples less than twelve inches high to those which tower at eight feet. For Camara, her figures represent the world as she sees it, with people that are, good, bad, beautiful, or ugly. All these creatures are modeled in the yard in front of her house, and fired in an open-hearth kiln.

She explains the distorted faces of her creations as a response to our indifference to our ancestors. Or when forty small monsters are clinging to a pregnant mother, it’s because we’re all fleeing from something! Before unveiling her “secrets,” she locks herself in with her talisman (an ox-horn) and everything becomes possible. Regarding art, she answers: “I am thinking, I have an idea, I am working.”
© CAAC

SENI CAMARA EXHIBITIONS
2007
Why Africa

Lingotto

Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli
Torino - Italy

2006

100% Africa

(October 12 2006 to February 18 2007)
The Guggenheim Bilbao

2005
Arts of Africa
Grimaldi Forum
Monaco - France

2005
African Art Now : Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection
Museum of Fine Art Houston
Houston - USA

2001
Venice Biennale
49th International Art Exhibition
Venise - Italy.

1991-1992
Africa Hoy
Contemporary Art Cultural Center, Mexico.
Groninger Museum, Netherland.
The Atlantic Center of Modern Art, Las Palmas de Gran Canary, Spain.

1991
Senegal
Otto-Ritcher-Halle.
Galerie des Institutd Für Auslandsbeziehungen.
Landesmuseum, Oldenburger Kunstverein.

1989
Magiciens de la Terre
Georges Pompidou Center.
La Grande Halles de la Villette.
Paris, France.