Footnotes

• Provenance
  Purchased directly from the artist by the current owner, Côte d'Ivoire circa 2008.
  
  
  Frédéric Bruly Bouabré was born in Zéprégühé, Ivory Coast in 1923, and was one of the first of this traditionally non-literate community to be exposed to the idea of a written language. The discovery inspired a desire to create an alphabet for his native tongue, Bété. The alphabet that he devised was pictorial; each symbol was based on shapes of the quartz stones native to the Ivory Coast. He recorded the alphabet in a series of postcard-sized drawings, executed in pen and crayon. Bouabré followed Alphabet with a number of similar post-card series. The modest medium belies the weightiness of the subject matter concerned with exploring the concepts of language, international diplomacy, sexual politics and knowledge.
  
  The present lot is titled La venue au monde de l'Humanite ('The Birth of Humanity'). The series communicates the fundamental multiculturalism of Bouabré's world-view. Each card depicts a single figure endowed with both male and female reproductive organs, and a stream of stick men pour from the figure's womb. The stick figures all possess the same attributes, highlighting the universality of the human experience. We are all born and we all die, regardless of race or nationality.
  
  Bouabré describes this 'citizenship of the world' thus:
  
  "Whether you come from America, Africa, Asia or elsewhere, I show through my work that we are all part of this same entity, just as two or three children suckled at the breast of the same mother are part of the same body. Because we are all created by the earth, we are truly related in terms of race and colour."
  
  
  Bibliography
  Ikon Gallery, Exhibition Guide, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (www.ikon-gallery.co.uk)
  R. Dorment, 'Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: A childlike world of goodness and colour', in The Telegraph (4 September, 2007).

Saleroom notices

• This series was purchased by the current owner directly from the artist in 2011, not in 2008 as stated in the catalogue.