Art de la Rue: Street Art from Ouagadougou

Les Arts de la Rue

Babs’ paintings are jewels of color and light, and show the vibrancy of life in the cities and the villages of West Africa. Painted in a unique style—semi-realistic and semi-naïve—his work is a type of West African folk art of which Babs is the acknowledged master.

African “street art” is a vibrant tool of personal expression manifesting in a variety of unique ways. It comes in the form of signboards for barbers and other services, painted shop fronts, painted interpretations of street and village life, signage for political campaigns and striking murals designed to inspire.

On a surface level, these street scenes, that are so deliberately and carefully brought to the canvas, could be seen as simply a cartoonish look at the foolish or unimportant everyday behaviour of the masses. The approach could be labeled as “naïve” or “folk art” as a result of what seems, at a casual glance, to be an unconsidered placement of figures and a seemingly chaotic composition. The people (and animals) that populate these creations are not comic-strip characters or shallow two-dimensional caricatures. Instead, they radiate a humanity and a depth of individual character that elevates them from being only superficial figures and bestows them with distinctive personalities and a soulful essence.

“The buzz and frenzy of all human activity is here and one can stand in front of each work and enjoy the glorious details of mountains of vegetables, fruit and the famous ‘cure all’ beer on offer. I saw parallels with Brueghel’s depiction of Dutch people, of Lowry’s workers hurrying to work in the ‘satanic mills’ of the cold industrial north west of England.”

Astrid Burchardt in ArtsTalk Magazine
(https://artstalkmagazine.nl/street-art-from-burkina-faso-at-acme-studios-in-the-hague/)