Quartz Africa – In 1948, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, a young Ivorian former colonial navy officer, living in Dakar, Senegal—then the capital of French west Africa—had a vision. The skies opened up, revealing seven suns dancing around a central star. Bouabré changed his name to Cheik Nadro, “the Revealer,” and dedicated his life to inventing a new writing system for his people, the Bété.
Bouabré is the first Ivorian artist to have his work showcased in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which will be on display through Aug. 13, 2022. The exhibit pays homage to Bouabré’s decades-long career, showcasing 11 series of drawings totaling more than 1,000 individual works, including his two best-known bodies of work, Alphabet Bété (1990-91) and Connaissance du monde (1987-2008.)
“Frederik’s work transcends discussions around fluidity versus balkanization. He shows language to be a living, breathing, evolving thing,” Uzodinma Iweala, the CEO of the Africa Center in New York (formerly known as the Center for African Art) told Quartz. “It forces us to ask the question, who is the arbiter of what is taught and what we see as knowledge?”