Oil on canvas
16 1/8 x 13 in
For this 7th edition of Découvertes, curated by Nora Diaby, four emerging artists come together around a common thread: memory, identity, and transmission. Maria Adjovi, Jean-Luc Konkobo, Lydia Matiegou-Keïta, and Capucine Minot were selected for their singular, deeply embodied artistic worlds — and for the subtle echoes they weave between one another.
Through photography, painting, wood sculpture, or pencil drawing, their works speak of bodies, territories, forgotten or rediscovered gestures. They capture fleeting moments, recompose memories, summon mythical figures or shape intimate narratives. There is no imposed theme here—only a shared pulse: the desire to speak through material, to carry a voice, to root oneself in a present haunted by echoes of the past.
Maria Adjovi treats painting as an extension of interior silence. Her weightless portraits, inspired by photographic scenes, float between haze and light. They evoke faith, doubt, and the intensity of unseen bonds.
Jean-Luc Konkobo’s photographic series Apocalypse, constructs a world between mythology and science fiction. His hybrid figures, captured in desolate landscapes, embody the tensions of a contemporary Africa—one that questions itself, searches, and reinvents.
With her raw wooden pieces etched using pyrography, Lydia Matiegou-Keïta explores cycles of repetition and buried transmissions. Her delicate “baobabs” form miniature forests — intimate archipelagos where the traces of the material intertwine.
With Capucine Minot’s hyperrealistic drawings, each object becomes a fragment of memory: a Baoulé comb, a Dan mask, a handful of palm seeds… Her work invites us to slow down, to look closely, to restore meaning to the simplest things.
Far from academic categories or illustrative approaches, this exhibition is a sensitive journey, a visual polyphony where each voice rises in its full singularity.
Through the eyes of these four artists, Découvertes #7 once again reaffirms LouiSimone Guirandou Gallery’s mission: to foster new forms of creation in Africa and beyond, and to offer emerging talents a space for dialogue, experimentation, and visibility
