Armand Boua


 

The violence that followed the disputed Ivorian presidential election in late 2010 has greatly influenced Armand Boua’s work. Amidst the political turmoil that enveloped Abidjan, the Ivory Coast's sprawling capital, and as the conflict escalated, many children became separated from their families. Drawn to densely populated areas in search of work, the children found themselves vulnerable to exploitation and often excluded from the very opportunities they sought out. These children tended to live in slums with poor sanitation, minimal access to safe drinking water and overcrowded schools. Leaving the slums to escape these conditions means facing a worse predicament; enduring life on the street. 

Boua takes the street kids of his hometown Abidjan as subjects for his portraits. ‘I wanted to show their suffering, their way of life’, he says, ‘so that people are finally aware of this painful reality they pretend not to see’. The artist is noted for his textured and layered compositions, using tar and acrylic on found cardboard boxes. Each layer is applied and then scrubbed and stripped back, leaving abstract forms that come in and out of focus. His use of found materials – recycling the cardboard boxes used as makeshift shelters by street kids – shows a strong engagement with his environment. Boua achieves a careful balance between his heavy gestures and violent execution and the gentle treatment of his subject matter, both mute and subtle. 

Boua was born in 1978 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he lives and works. Recent acquisitions have been made by the Saatchi Gallery, UK, The Franks-Suss Collection, Hong Kong and the Tiroche DeLeon Collection, Israel.

Works in the collection