Aboudia Abidjan, Ivory Coast, b. 1983

Aboudia’s paintings draw inspiration from the political and social landscape of Abidjan, emphasising the resilience of everyday people and critiquing capitalist ideals of success.

As a child Aboudia’s artistic talent was nurtured by his mother, a respected komian or healer. With her blessing, he moved to Abidjan while still a teenager, joining the Institut National Supérieur des Arts et de l’Action Culturelle. In keeping with the manifesto of the Vohou Vohou movement, the Institut rejected western, colonial teachings in favour of a creative language rooted in the cultural traditions of Africa and materials from the local environment. Aboudia’s paintings quickly became infused with this teaching, the frenetic energy of Abidjan and Nouchi culture –a vibrant street language blending French, Ivorian languages, Spanish and English to express the Ivorian urban experience.

In 2011, as civil war escalated in the Ivory Coast, Aboudia worked in an underground studio in Abidjan, absorbing the trauma and violence into a series of powerful paintings that spoke of the painful present while remembering past wisdom: the healing forests of his childhood and the principles of the Vodún religion that intrinsically links nature, community and the spirit world.

Now living and working in Abidjan and New York, Aboudia’s work continues to draws upon Vohou Vohou principles and the urban environment while cautioning against western concepts of infinite wealth. In his latest series of paintings, vodúns - the spirit intermediaries between the sacred and the human - are positioned as protective forces attempting to draw the gaze of the human figures away from false promises and back to a more traditional, West African value system.

Previous exhibitions and biennales include Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA; the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Vestfossen, Norway; the 59th Venice Biennale, Italy and the Dak’Art Biennale, Senegal.