ABDOULAYE KONATÉ

Abdoulaye Konaté: Lune bleue continues the artist’s longstanding exploration of the textile medium. Based in Bamako, Mali, Konaté works with locally produced cotton. He selects fabrics that are then cut, sown, and assembled—each strip acting as a single brushstroke—into large-scale symphonic compositions that probe the intersections of materiality, structure, and tone. The artist also often includes stitched and woven appliqués, borrowed from a broad lexicon of symbols and emblems encountered throughout his life or during his travels and personal research.

The exhibition takes its title from Lune bleue (2019), one of Konaté‘s largest works on view and a highlight from his solo survey at the 2022 Dakar Biennale. Distinguished by subtle graduations of blue, the work’s central round form evokes Konaté‘s childhood memories of the moon reflected in Lake Faguibine—a lake that today is nearly dry, resulting in the collapse of the local ecosystem. Blue is a significant colour for the artist, representing personal sensations as well as the inspiration he has found in, for example, the hues of fabrics worn by the Tuareg people of the Sahara. Conjuring the depths of the night sky, Lune bleue comprises an homage to memory and nature while recalling the disastrous effects of climate change.

Konaté‘s new works are inspired by his recent travels through West and North Africa—and invoke a range of motifs and colours found in the architecture, sculpture, textiles, and ceramics of Mali, Cameroon, Niger, Morocco, and Tunisia. Exploring the aesthetic possibilities of each form and impression that he employs, Konaté‘s contemporary abstract language is deeply rooted in traditions of craftsmanship and artistic creation. Poetically merging the personal and the collective, his evocative textile works encapsulate and convey the presence of individual and shared perception, and the histories of material commemoration and expression.