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Modern and Contemporary African Art: A Collaborative Vanderbilt Student Research Project

Interview With Abdoulaye Konaté in Bamako, February 2015

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Abdoulaye Konaté Short Biography
Abdoule Konaté was born in 1953 in Diré, Mali. He began his artistic career studying painting at the Institut National des Arts in Bamako, and then later moved to Havana, Cuba for seven years where he continued his education at the Instituto Superior des Arte before returning to Mali.
In addition to being the Founding General Director of the Conservatorie des Arts et Métiers Multimédia Balla Fasseké Kouyaté in Bamako, Kounaté has received several awards within the art world. Notably, in 1996, he received the Léopold Sédar Senghor Prize at the Dak’Art Biennale in Dakar. In 2002, he was granted the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France. In 2008, he was nominated for the Artes Mundi 3 prize, Cardiff. Lastly, in 2009, he received the title of the Officer de l’Ordre National du Mali.
Interview and Elements of Konaté's Works
As described in the video, Konaté is currently a practicing artist in Bamako. His work deals primarily with textiles and installations, which aim to extend color boundaries, while grappling with issues of geography, clothing and culture. The fact that he is constantly discovering new colors allows him to extend the ranges of color with which he works, and create new, subtle forms in the background that resemble human and insect figures.
Through his unique treatment of a vast range of colors, Konaté describes himself as daring and diverse in the elements that his work encompasses. In the 2015 interview, Konaté describes the figures in his works as embodying aspects of the ocean. Not only through visual images of sea life, but also with respect to the thought of how much the ocean has absorbed in terms of African history. Konaté goes on to describe how the depth of the ocean speaks to the issues of immigration, slavery, and war. Konaté views this depth of absorbed history as an opportunity to create an artistic topographical representation of historical events.
Abdoulaye Konaté In The Larger Narrative of African Art History
Konaté establishes himself within the larger narrative of African art history in that he employs larger themes of human struggles and events within the aesthetics of his work. Konaté's grandiose installations are rich in both history and color. The extensive range of colors that Konaté expresses in his work is a simultaneous nod at the extensive range of socio-political themes that underly the aesthetics of his work. In addition to exploring new colors within his work, Konaté delves into questioning the ways in which individuals and communities have been affected by larger forces such as power struggles, religion, epidemics, war, societal turmoil, and globalization both in his home country of Mali and beyond.
Konaté embodies elements of nationalism in that within the aesthetics of his work, he uses fabrics and materials native to his home country of Mali. The different woven and dyed cloths are sewn together, signifying the interwoven-ness and diversity of ideas and culture within the country of Mali. The end results of Abdoulaye Kenoté's work are large-scale installations with cultural and figurative elements, which he purposefully leaves ambiguous in an effort to encourage viewer opinions and narratives about what each work represents. Additionally, Kenoté stays true to West African roots through the traditional use of textiles as a language through which to communicate and commemorate. Therefore, the material he uses acts as an emulsifier to combine local and global structures. Through his work, Konaté aims to redefine homogenous Western narratives by combining cultural singularity and global systems.

Moreover, Konaté's training outside of his home country also lends him to the larger narrative of African art history. In some of his work, he alludes to some of the well known Western artists, while in others, the themes of his work are purely rooted in Africa.
Recently, Konatés work has experienced a shift from more literal depictions to more abstract representations. Exemplary of this shift is Konaté's Croix de Lumière- Croix de Sang (2010). In this work, a monotone work with flashes of red, he exhibits traditional Komo colors of white, red, and black, depicting religious themes of the cross, and hierarchical power structure struggles.