Que je naisse, tout doux, semant

May I be born softly, sowing

Selebe Yoon is pleased to present "Que je naisse tout doux, semant" (May I be born softly, sowing), a solo exhibition by Senegalese artist Arébénor Basséne (b.1974, Senegal) at L’Atlas in Paris, an exhibition venue supported by the Emerige Group. 

Imbued with the stories of ancient civilizations and West African mythologies, it is the stuttering of history that fascinates the artist. He is passionate about the first African migrations to Andalusia, as well as the links developed by Cheikh Anta Diop between the Nile Valley and West Africa. Faced with the plural narratives of history, its falsifications and its evidence, there is a tension between "historical truth or myth" that secretes a pictorial imagination for the artist.

At L'Atlas, the works of Arébénor Basséne reveal human forms in motion that are exhausted in landscapes of eroded textures. Hard to feel, bodies seem to undergo a metamorphosis and blur in the center of a mass of matter with a marked anchorage in the ground. The figures resonate as evocations of traditional dances such as those found in Casamance among the Diola, the artist's region of origin, where the dancers frantically strike the ground with their feet. At the same time, these paintings echo the physical and mystical dimensions of wrestling in Senegal. The ochre tones mark the movement of the earth, interspersed with bright colors that belong to an imaginary and quasi-fantasy world. The characters are only fragments of bodies and are not the only protagonists: the canvas is punctuated with symbols, cartographic motifs, aquatic or vegetal elements. He evokes in his works the invisible forces summoned during ancestral practices with a particular attention to the respect of the spirits of nature.

The artist uses techniques and materials specific to West African craftsmanship: the canvases are subjected to the batik technique, soaked in wax and natural pigments. On the surface of the canvas, he uses various materials such as gum arabic (the raw material that made the West African coast attractive to foreign sailors), the ink used for Koranic tablets, fouden (henna) and natural pigments from the Dakar region.

For his works on paper, Arébénor Basséne superimposes layers of materials - natural pigments, wax, ink and sawdust. Inspired by ancient writings, children's scribbles, archaeological finds or rock engravings, his works are strewn with abstract forms and figurative fragments. Textural cracks and folds evoke raw visions of material such as rock strata, geological faults, earth and sand - visions that evoke landscapes of her continent. As our gaze moves from one unit to the next, microscopic visions of earth materials transform into macro perspectives of geographic areas, relief representations, deltas, desert dunes, and river patterns. Each piece carries the illusion of the erosion of history, swept away by time.

Text copyright: Selebe Yoon