paintings November 2015

Envol, acrylique sur toile, 60X90 cm 

oiseaux bleu, acrylique sur toile 40X60 cm   

Buverteta, acrylique sur toile, 60X90 cm 

Rikha, acrylique sur bois, 20X30 cm

Zaida I, acrylique sur bois, 20X30 cm

Zaida II, acrylique sur bois, 20X30 cm

Zueinoua, acrylique sur bois, 20X30 cm

melhefas, acrylique sur isorel, 20X20 cm

'douceur et ardeur'

une recherche autour du voile et du mouvement

''Octobre 2014, je commence un travail de recherche autour de la danse féminine Maure.

Le ''melhefa'', voile vaporeux et fluide que les femmes du Sahara portent, est utilisé différemment selon les mouvements de la danse.

C'est cette recherche de mouvement que j'ai voulue travailler.

Peintre de paysages et de portraits, plutôt de l'inertie.

Comment j'aborde ce projet? Je dessine, je croque, je danse, écoute la musique et je peins.

Exposition à l'IFM de Nouakchott novembre 2015

back in the studio

new work coming soon

final version

Taken today at the Institut français before the opening.

work in progress

work in progress

This is my laast painting for my exhibition The Road opening on the 18th September in Nouakchott at the Institut Français.
I'm working layers over layers trying to reach this mental picture I have of how it should look at the end some days I believe I'm in the right path just to loose it all some hours later.
After spending months working on the small sizes that constitut the body of the exhibition this much bigger one is quite a challenge.

On the road, painting exhibition

work in progress

My exhibition opens at 6 pm on the 18th of September 2012 at the Institut Français de Nouakchott, Mauritania. The theme is the road that joins Nouakchott to Atar in the region of Adrar. The only human presence in the paintings are the telecommunication antennes that keep proliferating in a country where most of its population doesn't have access to running water or electricity. But we can keep all in touch if we put some money in our telephones.

box paintings

 Tichitt

 Oualata

dining room

 taglidia

 sand storm

Zouerate 

living room

With some horrible appliances in the wall needing to be hidden.  My box paintings, inspired in some of the patterns used to decorate leather work in Mauritania, was the best design solution I could find for Lucia's house.

Coming off the wall about 10 cm and having polished the wood so that the veins show, they're more an object than a painting. 

It was a very good exercise just before I start the new series of landscapes for my exhibition in mid September at the Institute Français in Nouakchott. 

Lisbon exhibition, 8th of July, mark your calenders.

Km350

 I've a coming up exhibition in Lisbon at the Paula Cabral Art Gallery. There will be a painter from South Africa, Adrienne Silva and another painter, Jirina Nebesarova from the Czech Republic.

This was the opportunity I was waiting for to start a series about the road leading to Atar (or anywhere else in this desert country that only has four tarmac roads, the one to Atar, North East, the one to Rosso and to the frontier od Senegal that runs South, the "route de l'espoir" the longest with more than 1200 Km towards the East and the Malian border and the most recent the road that was finished in 2005 and that runs from the Northern frontier (Western Sahara) to the South and like all of them has its converging point in Nouakchott the capital - another tarmac road is being built that runs along the river Senegal)

  Mobile antennes just like the roads are opening the country to the rest of the world and vice versa.

 They both allow for more mobility and communication making people less vulnerable. 

In a country as big as Mauritania with a very small population just over 3 million, news about events would arrive always with delay, days, weeks, months? Always making people feel detached of what was happening in the rest of the country. The same for news from relatives or friends living in another area.

Km 75

 For me the most amazing thing about the desert is its immensity and how it makes us conscious of our utter insignificance. 

 This series show the desert seen from the tarmac road that links Nouakchott to Atar, 409 Km.

 The point of view never changes and the places are always deserted of people.

 The sizes are small 20 X 20 cm and 30 X 20 cm worked as diptychs. (since I've been living here the size of my work has adjusted to my means of transporting them, Big if they can be rolled , small if not) 

I want to have music playing on head phones during the exhibition and while looking for Mauritanian music in the net I came across this great blog about Sahel and desert musique where you can even download it and got in touch with Chris that hopefully will help me in choosing local musique that best will convey the greatness of this country that can seem so empty and repetitive to those who cross it in a hurry. 

 If you're in Lisbon please come and visit the exhibition it will be on until the 6th of August. I'm also participating at the second urbansketchers symposium in Lisbon the 21-23rd July registration is open until the 4th of July.

landscapes with antenna

Nouakchott- Atar, km 15

Just started a small series of diptychs (20X20 cm and 20X30 cm).
The series are about the road that links Nouakchott to Atar and the introduction over the last 3/ 4 years of communication antennes for mobile phones. Those almost empty spaces, devoid of human beings became occupied by the presence of those antennas that symbolise the arrival of technology in a land devoid of the most basic infrastructures.

democratic postcards

When I had my portraits exhibition in June, a Mauritanian scholar  came up to me and said he really liked my work but that he couldn't afford it. He said that it would be nice if I made it more democratic by printing some  postcards so that he could have one.

So thank you, Pr kamara here is the first of my postcards.

more paintings + photo!

        

more paintings

portraits at the exhibition

portraits on craft paper

Working for my exhibition in May at the C.C.F. in Nouakchott. Portraits on craft paper so expect me to be sketching a bit less.

mother and child

This is my contribution to GalerieSinaa, Nouakchott, collective exhibition opening in the 8th of March. 

Women's day is celebrated on the 8th and the theme proposed to the artistes was "mother and child".

Mauritanian artistes and resident foreigner artistes will be presenting one or two paintings for the show, you're all welcome from 5pm until 7.30pm.

wall painting 2

Drawing done in my sketchbook in February 2007 from a cushion found in a shop at Ayoun el Atrouss, Mauritania.

the beggining

with a bit of help from my friends, Bilal and Hermann (taking the photo)

Fatima and the finished wall

Here is the second wall I got to work on, using the same pattern as in the first one, i decided to repeat half of it creating this way a new one, the original pattern was taken from the ones used in a leather cushions.

Leather art and crafts are the work of Mauritanian women belonging to the cast of the "maelemins" they create utilitarian objects in leather and decorate them with exquisite patterns, different groups will have their own "motifs" making it easier to identify from which village the work comes from.

This works has to do with the disapearence of a memory. Knowledge is transmited orally and as the newer generations are being scholarised and opting for different jobs, this "savoir faire" is not being transmitted.

Most objects are for daily use so their life span is reduced.

The patterns are first recorded in my diaries , latter those patterns will be reworked and used in a new surface, wood or walls or both.

wall painting

 Since I got back in Mauritania I've stop sketching instead I started doing this big wall painting based in an idea of making some paintings that will work alongside wall paintings for a future project. 

 So I started with a wall from my living room and soon will be doing a second one in Herman's Auberge, hope I won't run out of walls.

craft portraits 2

detail

This portrait from an old woman from the fishing village of R'gueiba in the National park of the Banc d'Arguin, was done a couple of years ago. I was interested in all the necklaces she was wearing and which I could see while she went about her daily activities. I asked to take a photograph and as she was getting ready for it, covering herself up and sitting upright, I told her that I really wanted to have her necklaces. She opened the veil for the photo and when back in Nouakchott I painted this portrait.

necklace woman, acrylic on craft paper, 1.22 x 0.92 cm

From all the portraits I've been doing since 2005 its the one I took further in a realistic way. I made a decision that that was not the way I wanted to go and that I rather do things that looked like a sketch or half finished.

But I didn't want to part with this lady, so I exhibit it in Nouakchott but didn't put her up for sale and she is now in Portugal in my mothers place.

For great photos of the exhibition at the French Cultural Center in Nouakchott check: www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/mauritania/20061106-nouakchott.php

landscape paintings 2

I was invited last year to exhibit in the Island of Gorée, Dakar, Senegal as part of their yearly Festival "Regards sur cours". 2008 was also the Biennal of Dakar, "Dakar'art", and the artistes at Gorée where included in the OFF from the Biennal.

Gorée is a small island just facing Dakar and part of this big metropolis. There are no cars and bikes in the island and people take a ferry to get to work and back. A small pearl. But also known for being one of the places from where slaves departed to the Americas.

http://www.goree-regards-sur-cours.org/2007/index.html (worth just looking to see the magnificent gardens and interiors we got to exhibit in ).

I made 18 small landscapes, 20 x 20 x 4 cm, acrylic on paper mounted on board. Those five were reserved before I departed to Dakar, so they travelled back and forth. They're now in Portugal as the person never came back for them.

craft paper portraits

This is a detail of my last portrait on craft. I've started using craft paper here in Mauritania as its easily available and resistent. I use a piece of charcoal first to place the head or figure on the paper and then acrylics. I'll work from a photo or from a memory . As I leave large areas unpainted those areas tend to wave and curl due to the action of paint and water on the paper and brings to mind the desert sand.


They measure 1,22 x0.92 cm and some of them I work more than others. I specially like when they stay between a sketch and the begginning of a painting. Mostly are from moors, the Mauritanian community I know better. I spend at least a month each year living in a small village with a family sketching their daily activities.
But in 2006 I did a Peul (one of the african ethnies found in Mauritania) in her wedding custom, Mariam, she went to the opening night and everybody kept asking her to have her photo taken beside the painting. You can check that photo and some of the other works at

http://www.thisfabtrek.com/journey/africa/mauritania/20061106-nouakchott.php