Galerie Templon - Artist

Omar Ba

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Born in 1977 in Senegal, Omar Ba lives and works in Dakar and New York. 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. This combination of heterogeneous elements illustrates his 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

SAME DREAM – Solo show

Same Dream brings together several of Ba’s paintings depicting dictators and authority figures, who lead to corrupt and violent regimes across the African continent and in other parts of the world, particularly where the legacies of colonialism persist. At times represented as hybrid beasts—part human, part animal— these despotic warlords are typically enveloped in an abundance of lush flora and fauna. Indeed, nature becomes a recurring force across Ba’s oeuvre.

From September 17, 2020 to January 31, 2021

Contemporary Calgary, 701 11 Street SW, Calgary, Canada

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GLOBAL(E) RESISTANCE – group show

The exhibition ‘Global(e) Restitance’ reveals for the first time, more than sixty artists reunited for the last century around the question of “resitance”, including Senegalese Omar Ba and South African artist Billie Zangewa.
The exhibition that collects many work from many different medium and countries, questions the theoretical and esthetical relationship between politics and art. The idea of resisting, studied through the handling of politic as well as art for activism, as always been experienced by artists under oppression and inequalities.

From July 29 to January 4, 2021

Centre Pompidou, Rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris

Website

Omar Ba, Same Dream - Solo show

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting the first Canadian monographic exhibition dedicated to Omar Ba, one of the most influential artists of his generation. 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.

MBAM, MONTREAL, CANADA
From 30/05/2019 to 10/11/2019

Website

Same Dream - solo show

The Power Plant presents Omar Ba's first institutional solo exhibition.Omar Ba’s work engages with some of the most urgent issues of our time: the growing inequality of wealth and power globally, questions around immigration, and our changing relationship with the natural world. His penchant for depicting personal narratives alongside collective ones speaks to the“in-between” condition of his work, as he splits his time between Dakar, Senegal and Geneva, Switzerland, and blends the visual texture of both places through his practice. Ba draws from and intertwines a range of elements— the historical and contemporary, figurative and abstract imagery—from African and European cultures, and the techniques and tools he employs; including corrugated cardboard and canvas, paintbrushes and his hands. Additionally, Ba’s chosen materials are typically selected from his immediate surroundings and repurposed in creative ways. He prepares his surfaces—whether cardboard, canvas or wall—with a black ground, upon which he layers a vivid palette dominated by primary colours. His paintings teem with details as micro-worlds transpire within larger constellations, oscillating between bold planes of colour and intricate outlines, which unravel across their surfaces. The figures and forms portrayed are largely symbolic, referring not to specific individuals, but rather open to universal narratives.

Same Dream brings together several of Ba’s paintings depicting dictators and authority figures, who lead corrupt and violent regimes across the African continent and in other parts of the world, particularly where the legacies of colonialism persist. At times represented as hybrid beasts—part human, part animal— these despotic warlords are typically enveloped in an abundance of lush flora and fauna. Indeed, nature becomes a recurring force across Ba’s oeuvre. These biomorphic shapes are often inspired by Senegal’s dazzling coastal environment in which Ba grew up. In conversation with this group of paintings, the exhibition also presents works that reveal Ba’s affinity for portraying the strength of the human spirit --depictions of youth who, regardless of where they are, share some of the same dreams for the future. For the exhibition at The Power Plant, Ba has developed a new large-scale work directly on the walls of the gallery, exploring a recurrent motif of birth, death and reincarnation across different cultures today. The world of Omar Ba’s painting is a hybrid one, ultimately evoking a shared cosmogony between humans, plants and animals.

Event January 26, 1.00 pm, Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Center, Free admission : In Conversation, Omar Ba & Nabila Abdel Nabi. In this program, Omar Ba will discuss the evolution of his work with Associate Curator Nabila Abdel Nabi. The two will expand on the exhibition themes of the human spirit and the shared dreams and desires for the future. This conversation will conclude with questions from the audience.

Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi.

THE POWER PLANT, TORONTO, CANADA
From 26/01/2019 to 12/05/2019

Website

Le Havre – Dakar, partager la mémoire (group show)

MUSEUM D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE DU HAVRE (LE HAVRE, FRANCE)
From 06/27/17 to 12/31/17
Website