<aside> ℹ️ *I didn't clearly have the idea of the project in one day, it was the result of a process that started around March 2017. Here I'll try to explain how I went from including Ivorian Masks to my personal, dark artwork to create a colorful project about all the continent.

I hope you like reading* 💀

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The beginnings

I discovered digital art in late 2016, when after leaving the Fine Arts School I went to a Design School in Abidjan. I loved it because it was a new medium to express my creativity, and allowed me great opportunity for experimentation.

At this time, the central theme of my work was introspection because I was trying to find who I am. (I spent most of my childhood & teenage years feeling different from my peers and it had a negative effect on me, so I tried to find what kind of person I was.)

My first public artworks on Instagram↗ were a series of portraits: people with no visible iris because they were looking into themselves. (it actually scared people but I did not care lol)

I want to stress that everything was made only with the laptop touchpad because I didn't have a drawing tablet 💀🥲

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & the Rise of the Bété Identity 💀

As I was trying to define myself, one day in my boring Facebook doomscrolling sessions I saw a ~quote by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that struck me:

“...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

I was.. wow. Being Ivorian was an important part of my identity, but that identity was created by other people. By foreigners. Côte d'Ivoire has more than 60 ethnic groups and I'm from the Bété one, but I don't even know how to speak the language.

So as an attempt to reconnect with my roots, I started to include Bété masks in my work, then other Ivorian masks too. I wanted other Ivorians (especially the youth) to learn about the traditions, just to remind us where we came from.

Bété Masks —•— Made on March 6, 2017

The Glorification of Western Cultures + The Representation of "Africa"

I started to question why Ivorian teens & young adults did not embrace our own cultures, and why most of them (around me) were attracted to other cultures & countries, leaving our own behind. What i found was, in no particular order: