Born in Senegal and graduated of the Fine Arts Schools of Dakar, Geneva and Sierre (Switzerland), Omar Ba borrows references from various cultures to develop a metaphorical language that allows him to formulate complex criticisms of existing systems and to offer poetic and fluctuating alternatives.
The represented powers’ hegemony is transgressed by nature, which is present in various forms. If the attributes of power, the large outfits, the military decorations, the headdresses are present, the artist’s work transforms them into a pulsation of colors and forms. Having had an abstraction period, Omar Ba preserves in figuration a systematic composition that reveals the dreamlike part of representations. The figures oscillate between fantasy and reality, between tradition and avant-garde, between animism and rationalism. This oscillation, this pulsation, seeks to open a new path that is both a questioning of systems and a transformative proposal.
Omar Ba’s works tell stories that eliminate borders between Africa and Europe; past and present; good and bad. African memories blend with western experiences. Modernity appears in the form of pylons, trains or drilling sites, when nature is depicted with among others hedgehog, fish, tiger and monkey. The vocabulary imagined by the artiste creates visual surprises that form a unique artistic world thus delivering multi-faceted messages and abolishing secular and cultural differences.
