The Prism of Light

Simon Njami
Abdoulaye Konaté practiced every contemporary art form, from painting to installation, before finding the visual language that best suited the vision of the world which he wanted to share. His artistic practice has given him the freedom to distil his past experiences into a form that brings these different worlds together. His textile paintings, which draw on an ancestral technique, prove the contemporaneity of all techniques once they are translated into a universal language. In our contemporary society, where artificial intelligence and other technological gadgets seem poised to replace know-how, Konaté goes resolutely against the tides of fashion and so-called modernity and continues to show the world that human hands remain the most reliable instruments. Through his attitude and choices he asserts the presence of human aesthetics on industrial production and stands as a silent representative of the ecological values that many talk about but few follow. For the world often satisfies itself with revised and reworked words whose origins end up lost in the various adaptations applied. The word “ecology” comes from the Greek oikos (house) and logos (science or knowledge). If we stick to etymology, ecology should be experienced not as a movement solely concerned with environmental causes, but as a philosophical position encompassing all the issues related to the planet, including the issue of humans. “Ecology”, in the way the word is intended here, and the house or home to which it corresponds, are none other than the earth, the common home for which Abdoulaye Konaté has always been an incorruptible champion.

Whenever I come to write about Abdoulaye Konaté, I always find it essential to go back to the source. To talk about the elements that make the man before talking about the artist. For his entire practice is rooted first in his humanity and the gaze he casts on the world around him. If a more “technical” word was required to define him as an artist, I would say that Abdoulaye Konaté is a painter above all. Painting first entails applying colours to a surface (wood, paper, canvas). One of the transformations that Konaté brings to the definition of painting is that he abolishes pigments, ointments and such in his practice and replaces them with textile. In a very formal manner, he has moved from a representation that included figuration to a radical abstraction in which colour has become the only language. The meaning of his message is now translated in the prism he uses to evoke emotions, thoughts and standpoints. Everything in his work comes from metaphors, granting each of us the freedom to feel, with no theory imposed. Konaté composes bit by bit until reaching the chromatic balance he is seeking. There can be no painting without colour as a balance. To be convinced of this, one need only dwell on an analysis of the work he has been developing all these years. Textile represents the material with which he unfurls his inspiration. Its role does not stop at this passive position, however. Textile is active, in the sense that in Konaté’s hands, it is colours. These colours represent a sacred language. A silent reflection on the way the world is. A hidden cosmogony seeking the telluric balance between all the forces of nature. There is always a spiritual content running through Konaté’s work, a higher aspiration for ancestral wisdom. A metaphor, perhaps, for what art could be. A way of letting us glimpse the mystery of simple things. A way, as the poet Rimbaud wrote, of “seeing at times what men thought they saw.”

Art is a mystery that cannot be told with words. The messages it conveys and the metaphors it stirs are revelations that help us to feel the magic all around us. It is this magic which the Malian artist tries to capture and share with us in work that is in action. On arriving in the lands of North Africa and the Middle East, he experienced what can only be called a “revelation”. In this series, Abdoulaye Konaté explores the different declinations of light. Whether written in the titles or not, this is certainly the philosophical and meditative quest that he has decided to take and which he tirelessly follows, anchoring it in the desert and its endless expanses rife with mirages and chromatic variations imperceptible to the human eye. Konaté comes from the Sahel, so it is no surprise that his artistic sensibility was taken by the special colours and light he found when tackling these lands he has now been visiting for many years. His textile canvases – his paintings – have always been full of colours. The colours of Africa, of his native Mali, of the land. Abdoulaye Konaté could be seen as a farmer of art, an artisan who takes care over the slightest fibre and tiniest detail to bring to light what cannot always be seen. Abdoulaye is a man of tradition, as is textile art, but tradition is made to be revised and revitalised. And while the technique, the art of assembling the threads, remains the same, it is the project behind this assemblage that makes all the difference. The strips of fabric are no longer strips of fabric, they represent the palette from which Konaté composes harmonies, subtle dissonances, colour shadings and endlessly renewed chromographies.

In his latest productions, light holds a pivotal role. It is the central subject, even when it does not feature in the titles. Light the source of life. Light regulating nature and the rhythm of time. With this new series, Konaté has tried to pierce its secrets. He puts what is invisible to our eyes within reach. For light is not white; it is but a veil. A veil which, to be deciphered, needs to be seen from the inside with the eyes of the soul, if we are to get rid of the optical illusion aimed at our senses. White light separates into a range of colours that make up its prism. The least perceptible ones are dark purple, blue and blue-green. Then it gradually increases to green, yellow, orange and red, which give off the longest wavelengths. These are the colours we find in Abdoulaye Konaté’s paintings. The same colours that enchant our nature and shine with a special brightness beneath the desert sun. The verse borrowed from Ali Farka Touré reminds us that the desert sand is still earth.

First son of your father, do you fear the earth?
If you do not fear the earth, jump and dance;
With your feet, pound the earth.
I want to see your heels make the dust fly.

This luminous series is a hymn to the earth, a hymn to joy. This first son of the father is not to be taken literally. This first son is none other than the human being. The human being who, with his selfishness, greed and ambition, has mistreated the nourishing earth, the source of life. Ali Farka Touré’s words invite us to be reconciled with the nature around us, a nature which we do not own. Light is not only a physical phenomenon. It is a revelation. It unveils wisdom and knowledge. And perhaps that elusive thing we call truth. The work Source of Light develops on a green background. Source of Light (Hexagon) uses a red background. Motifs of Arabia unfurls on a grey background. Timbuktu is a colour shift that starts with indigo blue and ends on yellow with a red parenthesis. Source of Light (Sun) unfurls on an ochre background. Whichever work we choose, we always find elements of this prism that makes light.

Africa is not, as Joseph Conrad wrote, the heart of darkness. Quite the contrary. It is the continent where the greatest density of light can be found. And light does not lie. Light, according to the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, represents the light we each hold within us and which educators are responsible for revealing by helping their students find it in themselves. Abdoulaye Konaté’s work therefore does not content itself with being artistic, it is pedagogical as well. Let’s return to the piece entitled Timbuktu for a moment. The texture of this work, shifting shades that start with a deep indigo blue which refers to the famous Tuareg blue, contains a polysemy that takes a geographical space to illuminate a swathe of content that is not immediately perceptible. Firstly, the reference to the desert and its inhabitants (who are found in Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and even Mali). They are called “blue men”, due to this daraa – a piece of fabric, generally indigo blue, whose origins date back to the 7th or 8th centuries, which protects them from the sun and the sandstorms. A blue which, as the legend goes, has seeped into their weathered skin.

And then there is the mythical city. Martyred by a simmering war that has shaken the country for too many years. A contemporary symbol of the religious and political tensions that traverse the whole region. A symbol of the dystopia that is shaking the world. Yet at the same time, Timbuktu is a symbol of hope and of light, in the sense it held for 18th-century European philosophers. For Timbuktu housed one of the first universities in the world, the Sankore madrasa, university or mosque, built in 1325. It taught generations of intellectuals and was a major site for all the scholars in the region and beyond. It represents the history of Africa that philosophers such as Hegel claimed did not exist. Timbuktu produced this impalpable light that nourishes souls and minds. This university, built from banco (a mixture of clay soil and chopped straw) is another tribute to the earth, which is Mother earth to every African.