The monumental works depicting the battle of Little Big Horn, exhibited on the Pont des Arts in Paris in 1999, made the Senegalese artist famous. The installation has just joined the fortress in the Hautes-Alpes for at least ten years.

Muscled warriors meld, horse bumping. Sounds of the fury of battle are heard. Under the impressive curvilinear wooden frame of the old Rochambeau barracks, at the fort of Mont-Dauphin (Hautes-Alpes), is played the battle of Little Big Horn, opposing, in 1876, a coalition of Cheyennes, Sioux and Arapaho to the soldiers of General Custer’s regiment.

In thirty-five monumental sculptures, visible from 6 July, the Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow (1935-2016) celebrates the resounding victory of the fragile over the powerful. Deposited in this fortified village for a period of ten years renewable by his widow, the director Béatrice Soulé, this epic installation is well known to the Parisians who discovered it amazed, one day in March 1999, on the Pont des Arts.

The exhibition has remained in the annals with its record attendance – at least 3 million visitors in three months. «An unexpected success», recalls art critic Emmanuel Daydé, then deputy mayor for cultural affairs. For the former physiotherapist born in 1935 in Dakar, who later became an artist, it is consecration. But also, surprisingly, a swan song.

At the moment when Ousmane Sow gains international fame, the art world turns its back on him. Although he was the first African artist recognized in France, none of his successors, to whom he had paved the way, claimed it.

Mayor’s daughter supports her cause
It had all started well. In 1993, the Senegalese sculptor, who two years earlier had been on the cover of Revue noire – a quarterly magazine that revealed a number of African talents – was invited to the major five-year exhibition at Documenta in Kassel, Germany. In 1995, here he is at the Venice Biennale, which is to contemporary art what the Cannes Film Festival is to cinema. The autodidact dreams of an event in Paris.

By chance, he met Hélène Tiberi, daughter of the mayor at the time, Jean Tiberi. Who supports his cause at the City Hall. The location is easy: it will be the Pont des Arts, between the Louvre and the Academy of Fine Arts. It will take diplomatic treasures to convince these two institutions, who have not seen with a good eye the proximity of massive silhouettes imagined by an African artist.Archives «World»: Ousmane Sow questions Bordeaux and politicians

The neighbouring National School of Fine Arts, where figurative art was then taboo, is also pinching its nose. Money is missing. The Havas group had initially promised to contribute to the addition of 5 million francs (the equivalent of 1 million euros today), but its new CEO, Jean-Marie Messier, is sneaking out. Béatrice Soulé moves heaven and earth, finds sponsors and is personally indebted to the tune of 1 million francs. More here

Source: Le Monde

“Every night in the world” was advertised on social media, with a beating drum. In fact, it piqued my curiosity. This Saturday, October 1, the show took place, at nine o’clock, at the Institut français in Abidjan. It has produced an excellent impression on the coming public in great numbers. We loved and applauded this living painting, this show of the slam poet Placide Konan and the director Alain Serge Agnessan.

If I spill my guts on this show, let’s first encourage the organizers. Apart from human imperfections of details, the show was well staged and artistically presented. It wasn’t just a play, it was better: music, choreography, slam, a game of actors that explodes, like firecrackers, at a great height and even better it told a moving story. And what a story!

Raising the curtain. A young man strapped like a bum appears. Disheveled, disordered and refreshed with alcohol, he progresses through the night and begins to exude: he begins a long speech punctuated with powerful accents. We dwell on his clothing disorder, which wearies with its complexity. It rains a light on him. The rest of the decor, vexed, is hidden in the night. He bears on his forehead the aftermath of a love that will not come again. His name is Ferdinand. Akissi, her lover, turns and dances around him, in the void. He does not see her. He calls her, she hears her; but, he cannot see her. How to fill this sudden gap between a dead and a living? How to join, to the perfection of the hereafter and here? How to dissolve two drowned of different densities? On either side of the shore, two beings challenge each other, without ever getting along, really, or really touching each other. The human being is only loneliness. Separated, detached, disjointed, he does not reach the world. Neither does the world reach him. While time has stopped running on one, it takes away the other. It draws them together without ever uniting them, without breaking the isolation. Everyone reaches out to a dream they can’t reach. Disorder of the self, panic attack in front of his impotence; a clinician could find there a new pathological vein.

Placide, the mastodon n°1 of the slam. One of those monsters that Alain Tailly created in a few copies, plays the role of Ferdinand. He writes a poem to Akissi, a role brilliantly staged by the dancer and singer, Marcelle Kabran, his beloved whom he wants to bring back to life. Ah! This Akissi! Was she born on a Sunday or a Monday? What a ball of energy! Its use of space, the expressions of its body are worth verses. One understands the whirlwind of fire that eats its soul. Is it in order to extinguish this consuming fire that he drinks so much? He plans to put on paper a poem that will tear his beloved from the bowels of the afterlife. Vain quest for a man splendid isolated, like all poets and who begins the slow and inevitable shipwreck of the damned. In a dark setting where a dream piled up that slipped between her fingers. The excess, – and this is what makes the beauty of this spectacle -, is such that Akissi speaking to Ferdinand in a face-to-face no longer even knows that she is often unaware that she is an ethereal soul, that she is dead. His voice sounds like a sermon in a brothel. Ferdinand, I think, lies to himself. He doesn’t really want to bring Akissi back. He wants to save himself by writing. The scenography is in my mouth. I hear she generated by the same person who directed the show.

Article directed with Siaka Bambam Doh Ouattara

This Saturday, September 24, 2022, in the great hall of shows and concerts in Paris, Le Zèbre de Belleville, the famous Senegalese comedian of social networks Mame Balla Mbow comes out of the virtual. After proving himself in Senegal, he organizes a One Man Show in Paris, the event capital. You will cry with laughter. If not, you will be reimbursed.

Inimitable touch-to-all, Mame Balla Mbow is an actor, humorist, comedian,… with equal success with spectators and users. He has played in hit series like Infidels, Mother Thiaba Arrest. This young man is one of the most followed Senegalese actors on social networks. He alone has the secret of this success story. He is not at his first one-man show. After the show he gave in Senegal, he does not intend to stop in such a good way. He intends to raise the Parisian public as he demonstrated at Canal Olympia and Sorano.

Born in Yeumbeul in the department of Pikine in Senegal, Balla Mbow is about thirty years old. Adored by a Senegalese fringe, Balla Mbow is one of the people who can be called influencers. Yet the man remains modest; he defines himself as a columnist and blogger. However, from a young age, he had only dreamed of becoming an actor: “From a very young age, I loved comedy. Inspiration is in my blood. I followed the great actors of the world like Jamel Debbouze. That is why I do not identify with the way comedy is done in Senegal. She’s in disguise and we highlight the feminine beauty, the screaming, and clowning. I said to myself: why not make a comedy on social networks and reach thousands of people, in other words, a new way of doing comedy’. So far, he’s done it well. His very clear positions that he serves Internet users with a touch of humour have made him a key figure in the Senegalese media scene.

Yet nothing predestined this young man to be fired by humour. His school curriculum is one of the most perfect. Holder of a law degree, Mame Balla Mbow is more devoted to the cause of citizens than to earn money. After his baccalaureate in 2010 that he had his baccalaureate, he had at heart to do sociology, but the voices of destiny are unfathomable. He is oriented at the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences of the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.

When he landed in the world of humour, he succeeded in building a community very quickly. Thanks to his talent, he won the Pulse Awards in 2021 as «Facebook Influencer of the Year». All the big brands and companies are fighting for advertising campaigns like Orange, Dolima, the Ministry of Youth, Canal+, Tecno, Oumou Group, Jumia. His self-deprecating appearances pose him as a major player in the world of virtual media. This committed artist does not mince words when the opportunity to denounce a fact arises. His credibility comes from his constancy. At home, money comes in the background. Living on his job is not easy at all. He himself admits: “I am in front when I see something that is not normal. [Because] I do not carry the fights of others.