Art from West Africa Today
Iniva are very pleased for artist Abdoulaye Konaté whose work is showing in We Face Forward – Art From West Africa Today in various galleries and museums across Manchester
Over the Olympic summer, Manchester is celebrating the global and the local, exploring the links between the city and West Africa as part of the London 2012 cultural festival with exhibition We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today (2 June – 16 September 2012).
Major new sculptural installations, painting, drawing, photography, textiles, video, sound and fashion ask visitors to consider global questions of trade and commerce, cultural influence, environmental destruction and identity. Challenging and humorous, curious, noisy, elegiac and eclectic – this is the dynamism of West African cultures today. These form a huge, city-wide exhibition, spreading across Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume (Platt Hall).
Iniva are delighted that Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté’s work is included in the show, specifically a piece that we commissioned him to create for the annual window spot at Rivington Place last December. Pouvoir et Religion, 2011 (Power and Religion), is a 7m long textile work which explores the position of Christianity and Islam within political and cultural life.
Find out more about the artist and his display at Iniva at Rivington Place here. There is also a gallery of images of the artist in his studio creating the work.
About the artist
Born in 1953 in Diré in Mali, Konate now lives and works in Bamako, Mali. He studied painting in Bamako and then in Havana, Cuba for seven years. His practices include painting and installation work.
In 2008 Konaté was nominated for the Artes Mundi prize. Major group shows include documenta 12 in 2007 and Africa Remix, Contemporary Art of a Continent in 2005 at the Hayward Gallery, London and toured to Paris, Tokyo and Dusseldorf.