"Come closer, have a look."
This familiar invitation, heard throughout the markets of Abidjan, resonates as a promise of discovery. One approaches a market stall, takes the time to observe, to be surprised, and sometimes to recognize something of oneself in what is revealed. Looking is never a neutral act. To look is already to choose what deserves our attention.
For its Eighth edition, Découvertes brings together four artists whose practices offer different ways of looking at the world and inhabiting it. Through painting, photography, collage, installation, and textile-based imagery, Naëtt Mbaye, Chelsea Odufu, Saleh Lô and Raé explore our relationship to visibility, representation, transmission, and transformation.
Some will draw our attention to realities we have learned to overlook. But all invite us to shift our gaze- not to see more, but to see differently. Together, their practices remind us that to exist is also to exist within the gaze of others.
With Naëtt Mbaye, looking becomes transmission. Drawing on family archives, stories passed down through generations, and the figures of the Driankés, her work celebrates the women who hold a central place within West African societies. Her photographs, extended through monumental textile veils embroidered with beads, evoke both intimate history and collective memory. Between heritage and contemporary reinterpretation, the artist invites us to cast a renewed gaze upon those who transmit, preserve, and shape the narratives from which we come from.
This reflection on transmission continues in the work of Chelsea Odufu. A multidisciplinary artist and world- builder, she creates images where African traditions, spiritualities, fashion, and imaginaries coexist freely. Ornaments inspired by Baoulé gold weights, sculptural silhouettes, spectacular adornments, and vibrant colours give rise to figures that seem to belong simultaneously to an ancestral past and to a future yet to be imagined. In her work, looking becomes a projection. It is no longer simply about seeing the world as it is, but imagining what it could become.
With Saleh Lô, looking becomes an imperative. For more than a decade, the artist has devoted a significant part of his practice to the Talibés, children encountered every day in the streets of Senegal whom we no longer truly see. Through deeply moving portraits and a monumental installation in which iconic tomato paste cans become silent witnesses to their condition, Saleh Lô confronts us with a social reality that familiarity has rendered invisible. His work reminds us that looking is also an act of responsibility.
Finally, with Raé, looking turns inward. Her works on handmade plant-based paper and her experimental photographs seek less to represent the world than to transform the way we perceive it. Organic landscapes, subtle plays of light, and sensitive compositions become the setting for a contemplative experience that invites us to slow down, observe differently, and question our certainties. Where the other artists reveal presences, Raé invites us to shift our own perspective.
Thus, "Come closer, have a look", is more than an invitation extended to the visitor. Behind these words lies a deeper question: How do we look at the world around us? Do we see those whom society has rendered invisible? Do we acknowledge the legacies that have shaped us? Can we imagine the futures that lie before us? Do we recognize the joy, beauty, and complexity of the lives that surround us?
A gaze can reveal, acknowledge, transmit, celebrate, transform, or heal. Découvertes #8 reminds us that sometimes, all it takes is a shift in perspective to reveal what has been there all along, right before our eyes.
