ART CITIES:Montreal-Omar Ba

Born in 1977 in Senegal, Omar Ba lives and works in Dakar and Geneva. His paintings, produced using a variety of techniques and materials, represent political and social motifs open to multiple interpretations. His artistic vocabulary raises historical and timeless questions while formulating a wholly contemporary artistic message. Omar Ba’s iconography features personal metaphors, ancestral references and hybrid figures.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MMFA Archive

Many of Omar Ba’s images over the past decade have depicted a world of violence and conflict, a potent exploration of the legacies of colonialism on the African continent. Soldiers, political leaders, labourers, skeletons emerge against black painted backdrops, a symbolic depiction of a contemporary ‘state of emergency’. More recently, however, Ba has reoriented his focus, seeking to celebrate the beauty and grandeur of the people of Africa, exploring the often forgotten inheritance of today’s African diaspora as descendents of the black Pharaohs of Egypt and Nubia. The first Canadian monographic exhibition dedicated to Omar Ba, “Same Dream”, showcases a selection of Ba’s major works from different periods in his career. In addition, the artist is creating a large-scale mural for the Montreal public, directly on one of the gallery walls. Ba’s work is at once a bold critique of tyranny, a celebration of the strength of the human spirit and an ode to the resilience of the world’s youth. As the artist says: “I’d like people to see that we need to give African artists their rightful place, and I also hope they come away with a more positive image of humankind. That we realize that beyond conflict, religion and culture, we are all one. That there are no blacks, yellows or whites – only humans”.  In his practice, Ba synthesizes the visual texture of his two homes (Dakar and Geneva) combining the historical and the contemporary, elements African and European, as well as a range of techniques and tools including corrugated cardboard and his bare hands. Ba prepares his surfaces, be they cardboard, canvas or wall, with a black ground, upon which he layers vivid colors and complex compositions teeming with detail. His figures emerge from lush flora and fauna and biomorphic forms inspired by the dazzling coast of Senegal, where he grew up. Micro-worlds exist within larger constellations that evoke a shared cosmogony between humans, plants and animals.  The  combination  of heterogeneous elements illustrates Omar Ba’s desire to abolish boundaries and categories. His work, with its enigmatic nature and poetic intensity, rejects all forms of didactic narrative, seeking instead to express his subconscious and his symbolic interpretation of the real.

Info: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), 1380 Sherbrooke Street West, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, Montreal, Duration 30/5-10/11/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue & Thu-Sun 10:00-17:00, Wed 10:00-21:00, www.mbam.qc.ca