‘This scene is alive’: Abidjan art week showcases city as growing cultural hub

Visitors gather at La Rotonde des Arts during the Night of the Galleries, part of Abidjan art week. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The Guardian

A nationwide graffiti festival was instituted two years ago, a symbolic U-turn in a country where graffiti art was previously associated with vandalism and artists ran the risk of being criminally prosecuted. Today, colourful murals line the outside walls of La Pyramide building and several posh hotels in the Plateau district.

Organisers of the art week say they hope to see sustained growth of the local art scene and have a goal to scale it to new heights “independently of external approval”. In this edition, artists from Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali were among those showing work across the city, and the number of participating galleries more than doubled.

The event’s founder, Yacouba Konaté, who is also the director at La Rotonde des Arts, says it is intentional about inclusion of as many members of the public as possible, a nod to the perception that enjoying art is a strictly elite activity.

Yacouba Konaté, the founder and director of La Rotonde des Arts, speaks with a group of visitors during the Night of the Galleries. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The Guardian

“We want this event to become increasingly visible and accessible to a broad public,” he said. “One of the things we’re trying to do is really communicate, to tell people that Abidjan is a cultural city and that there is a visual arts scene in Côte d’Ivoire and this scene is alive.”

This year, the week opened with a tribute to Simone Guirandou-N’Diaye, one of the earliest art historians in Côte d’Ivoire and a pioneer of the gallery spaces that gave the scene its first institutional roots. She and her daughter Gazelle now run Galerie LouiSimone Guirandou, one of this year’s participating venues.

A visitor takes in an exhibition by the New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The Guardian

At MuCAT, the exhibition Murmures d’Archives offered a different register of quieter, more archival art. It was there that the week closed with an artists workshop and a DJ set.

In upmarket Cocody, a solo exhibition mounted by the New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, one of the city’s most prominent spaces, drew the Ivorian diaspora into conversation with the local scene. The artist said the work was inspired by seeing art as universal.

“My vision is not tied to any particular country or continent; it transcends borders and everything that can be found on a map,” said Watts, who moved to New York in 1988 on the advice of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Whilst I use recognisable elements to make myself better understood, this is a project that goes far beyond that. It is the cosmos that I paint.”