Mauritanian music for my exhibition in Lisbon

Today I met Chris from Sahelsounds ( a blog you should visit if you like music). He did a sample of musical field recordings that I will play during my exhibition at the Paula Cabral Art Gallery .
See previews post for more details. Opening night friday 8 of July at 7 pm, all welcome !!!
There will be electric guitar music, bird sounds, road sounds, Koranic recitation and people speaking as the musicians play at a wedding. For us who live in Mauritania this music represents the sounds of the country.

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.

Conference le Printemps Arabes, Pr. Bertrand Badie

For more information on the conference check my post at urbansketchers.org

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.

demonstration at the blockate, Nouakchott

 Since the 25th of February 2011 young people have been demonstrating regularly at the "Place des blocks" an enormous empty space close to "Marché Capital" that's supposed to became the heart of a futuristic City Center.
They did demonstrate in this place and even tried to camp overnight but soon the police forces cleared the space. Since then the aim of the police is that no demonstrators put their foot in this ground, most of the time there are a lot more police securing the access to this spot than demonstrators.
The young people have been organising themselves through Facebook and Twitter and spreading their message, using not only arabic but all of the national languages as well as French (they still use mostly arabic).

demonstration for democracia real, Nouakchott

Spanish living in Nouakchott decided to demonstrate during an hour in front of their Embassy.

 Since the 15 of May Spanish people have been out in the streets protesting, I don't know how many of you're aware of the spanish revolution.  It ended up with a women reading the chart of democracia real.

 primeros momentos a las 7 de la tarde, un gendarme viene a questionar del porque de esta congregación

se reúnen todos para formar la palavra indignados

 llego tarde pero con el cartel, bravo

leyendo el manifesto

You can see photos of the event here . For great drawings from the event from Spain check Enrique Flores here from Madrid and Alvaro Carnicero in Cordova here

Beunge and Bendja

I just came across this great article (in French) about the music and dance from Atar and I wonder if the're talking about this group from Atar that I saw playing on women's day at the French Cultural Center.
Even if I can talk and understand the Hassania - the arab dialect spoken by the Moorish tribes of the Sahara, I've a lot of difficulty to understand music or poetry (I'm lacking a lot of vocabulary).
 But it was very powerful music sang by the women, unfortunately none danced.

fashion show of Bana Korel

 backstage, making up some of the guests and the models

 Aissata, dressmaker and mother of the young fashion designer doing the last touches.

 a small musical break and the show goes on

 a little girl in the audience

M-art a group of young Mauritanian artistes organised for the second year a 10 day long Art Festival.  They had sketching workshops going on at local schools to introduce the younger generations to drawing and painting, something that doesn't exist at all in the schools programmes ( there are no Art Schools and drawing/painting are not taught) and an open painting workshop at the National Museum of Nouakchott. For the last day of the Festival they sponsored a young Mauritanian fashion designer, Bana Korel. Bana had the help of her mother, a dressmaker and of Laye Sall tailor and fashion designer and Mamadou Diatta, taylor.
The show was at the Institute Français and the public was delighted and surprised by the beautiful creations of Bana Corel.

party

drawing in the dark, Taigue Ahmed

A choreographer and dancer from Tchad, Taigue Ahmed, doing a solo based on his experiences as a young boy in the war and how his mother got him out of the country by dressing him up as a girl. 

Very strong and beautifully performed but for the second time in the last months I drew on complet dark keeping my eyes in the stage (to see the women's concert on women's day click here)