Babacar Traoré DOLI, “La Renaissance Trotoire” (The Sidewalk Renaissance)
By Robin Riskin
Babacar Traoré Doli’s whimsical creations are born out of photographs onto which he digitally paints stories from his imagination. The works bear witness to urban street life and transform the ordinary into super-realities, blending pointillism, realism, and the abstract. Imagine the thick graphic figures of Romare Bearden played against the whorls of Klimt with the graphic edge of a New York City subway map, all set over serious journalistic photography.
Doli’s unique form of photo-painting is rooted in personal experiences from his hometown of Dakar, yet relevant to a universal sense of urbanity. The works open up possibilities for expression and map out new forms of documentation for the digital age.
Doli, who comes from a family full of artists and creative thinkers, counts among his uncles the sculptors Moussa Traoré, Ali Traoré, and his homonym Babacar Traoré. Doli’s late father Mamadou Traoré was Cultural Advisor to the last President of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade and worked with the former President Leopold Senghor. Traoré housed a kind of bohemian artist residency-cum-mosque in the late last century. Doli, a Dak’Art Biennale veteran, finds himself among a group of fresh and innovative young artists on the verge of bursting onto an international art scene.
Babacar Traoré DOLI, “La Récreation” and “Les Journaliers”
“La Récreation” and “Les Journaliers”
Two works capture contrasting moments of innocence and desperation, one of schoolchildren on break; the other, “les talibes,” street children who have to beg in order to pay the Marabou school fees. The difference of social positions and arbitrary nature of destiny are highlighted by the remarkable similarity of images. Digital strokes painted onto the photographs evoke a futuristic sense of time and suggest the aesthetics of Islamic traditions.
Babacar Traoré DOLI, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
“Ne Me Quitte Pas”
An homage to the disappearing culture of old Medina, a fast gentrifying quartier of Dakar. While buildings are being torn down and residents asked to move out of their homes, “Anarchie Sponsorisée” immortalizes the neighborhood’s history and captures its warmth with strands of colored light beads.
Babacar Traoré DOLI
“L’Arrivée” (The Arrival), “L’Attente” (The Wait), “L’Intermediare” (The Intermediary), “Le Départ” (The Departure)
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