WEST AFRICAN ARTIST DEBUTS IN KENYA

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (POSTED April 8, 2023)

Dominque Zinkpe was only in Kenya briefly in the past fortnight. But in those few days, he was able to mount his ‘Fantastic Humans’ exhibition of paintings, sketches, and sculptures at Alliance Francaise. He was also able to participate in one of AF’s enlightening panels, and had memorable moments meeting some of Kenya’s leading luminaries in our local visual art world. The Benin-born artist was here at the invitation of the AF Director, Charles Courdent, who had met Zinkpe first in Lagos following a solo exhibition he had there. After that, he met him again in his home town of Cotonou where he was able to get a glimpse of the artist’s broad practice.

Describing him as one of West Africa’s most important artists, Courdent had called Dominique to become the first Francophone artist to launch the AF artist-in-residence project that will become an annual event. “Zinkpe was only here for two weeks, which I feel was too short a time for him to get acquainted with Kenya’s dynamic art world,” the AF director told BDLife. Nonetheless, Zinkpe made a valuable contribution to the panel discussion dedicated to responding to the question, ‘Who/What Determines the Value of Art”. Like Kenyan artist Peterson Kamwathi, Zinkpe said that ultimately, it is the artist who determines the value of his art. Also, what is most important is for the artist to ‘be himself’ (or herself), and that originality is a critical component contributing to the value of an artist’s work.

Mounting his first exhibition in Cotonou in 2000, Zinkpe had previously worked as a tailor designing his own line of men’s and women’s wear. Like many Kenyan artists, he hadn’t funds sufficient to attend an art college. But he did his own private library research and was influenced by painters like Picasso, Braque, and Egon Schiele, as well as African artists, like the Ivorian sculptor, Christian Lattier. “I was a tailor by day, and a student of art by night,” Zinkpe tells BDLife through a face-to-face conversation over WhatsApp after he’d flown back home to Cotonou. The art scene in West Africa was thriving around 2000 when he made his debut, and he too has been doing well ever since. The originality of his art has served him accordingly. His colorful and tall (five feet) wooden totems, reflect a central theme running throughout Zinkpe’s art. It is his deep respect for African ritual, tradition and identity together with his embrace of modernity and the passion to translate the past into the contemporary. “I don’t struggle with them (tradition and modernity) as if they are at odds with one another. I embrace African traditions and care to bring them into contemporary works of art,” he adds.

His totem-like sculptures are made up of literally hundreds of miniature wooden figures, created originally for those cultures that embrace the tradition of twins. Like, for example, the Yoruba of Nigeria, who when one twin dies, a wooden sculpture is taken in to embody the spirit of that deceased child. Zinkpe began by creating his own set of mini-statues but now has a woodshop filled with local carvers who help him meet his orders to create his meticulously crafted sculptures. Each statue is held together initially with glue and then every figurine is nailed together to keep each piece intact. They came to Kenya covered in powerful primary colors, in blue, red, and white which the artists described as representing humans, his ‘fantastique humaines’. But he also refers to the spirit of the human, just as the Yoruba see their figurines embodying the living spirits of their deceased twins.

“I see the human body as more like a wrapping of the spirit,” Zinkpe says, referring now to his theology of Animism which he says reflects the spirit in all things. The name of the worship may be called Voodoo, but the practice is based on seeing the spirit in all things, even in a tree that gets chopped down to create a work of art. The spirit of that tree is still alive, revived as the sculpture,” he adds. Zinkpe’s view about the human body are playfully expressed in the sketches he displayed at Alliance Francaise. Each one is colorfully drawn to reflect the sensual ways of two lovers, dressed only in colors of red, black, blue, and bright yellow. In these, one can see the influence of Schiele, the 20th century Austrian expressionist painter. But ultimately, it’s Zinkpe’s touch that calls the shots on originality.