In Paris, the magical paintings of Omar Ba inspired by a Fulani tale

Happy is he who, like Hammadi, has made this beautiful journey… With his companions Hamtoudo and Dembourou, he is the hero of Kaïdaraand Fulani tale which was transmitted orally from one generation to another in families Africanfrom young people to old people, by the fireside. In this initiatory story, Hammadi, Hamtoudo and Dembourou will journey “in the land of the dwarf geniuses”on the lands of « Kaïdara »the god of gold and knowledge, whom they will eventually meet, not without trials. Only Hammadi will return alive… Aspiring only to knowledge, the wise man will have known how to renounce material goods.

In 1968, a few years before publishing The Strange Fate of Wangrin (1973), which brought him recognition, Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1901–1991) transcribed this oral account into a long poem versified. From the Malian writer, friend of Théodore Monod, everyone knows the formula, so famous that it sounds like a proverb: “ In Africa, when an old man dies, a library burns. » Kaïdara became his literary treasure.

The project of an exceptional book

With Hampâté Bâ’s book closed, “not to be too parasitized”, he set about illustrating Kaïdara for months and months.

As complex as it is powerful, this classic filled with mysterious apparitions now crackles before our eyes through the dazzling brushwork of the Senegalese artist Omar Ba (born in 1977), whose visions fade away in a book with a finely crafted layout, published by Diane de Selliers. To accompany the release of the elegant volume, Omar Ba’s teeming cosmogony of colors shines, until the Christmas holidays, in a free exhibition at the Templon galleryrue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare.

Invited by theeditor Diane de SelliersOmar Ba read the text of Amadou Hampâté Bâ “once, that’s all”, he assures us in the middle of the grands formats selected by its gallery owner Daniel Templon. In Paris, the painter had not exhibited for six years. With Hampâté Bâ’s book closed, “not to be too parasitized”, he set about illustrating Kaïdara for months and months, in his workshops in Bambilor, in the region of Dakaras well as Suissewhere he has shared his time for around twenty years.

An initiatory journey in 40 works

The result of the project, which counts around forty worksis conducive to dreams. THE Kaïdara of Omar Ba is inhabited by hybrid creatures, it is punctuated by an enigmatic fauna – ram, chameleon, bustard, rooster –, emerging in a profusion of featherswhich the painter makes vibrate with a textured touch ultra sensory. We think of Marc Chagall, who lent his phantasmagoria to illustrate The Fables of La Fontaine.

Before making a name for himself in contemporary art in the early 2010s, Omar Ba was born in 1977 in Senegal, to a Serer mother and a Fulani father. The artist does not speak the language but, as a child, he was bathed in the stories of this ethnic grouptransmitted by the voice of the griots. On paper backgrounds coated with black, yellow or orange paint, the one that was formed between Africa and Europe crosses with mastery protagonists in blue-jean and Fulani references. Its characters sit enthroned with royal magnificence.

Throughout the images, the delight for the eye, just like the interpretations, seem inexhaustible. Omar Ba’s illustrations are an invitation to see beyond the visible and to cherish the marvelous. “You will know that you know when you know that you do not know,” the god Kaïdara tells us.