Premier verre au grin, 2023

Daouda Traoré  

Born on May 25, 1987, in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Daouda TRAORE graduated in Plastic Arts from the National Institute of Arts (INA) of Bamako and ended as top of the 2013 class of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers MultiMédia Balla Fasseké KOUYATE.

Teacher of plastic arts at the public high school of Sikasso, the daily lives of his students inspire him, he explores their identity and mirrors his own, creating his own universe which he-himself-describes as "his unreadable poems".

This boldly expresses its spontaneity and uniqueness beyond the imposed aestheticism.

The choice of materials is linked to his environment, which in a random way, provides him with textiles, used sheets, tin cans, bags of millet, wool strings, and iron wires that he transforms thanks to a wide range of techniques.

The result: unexpected textures that enliven the characters and the everyday situations he presents, where ocher tones dominate, reminiscent of the lateritic land of the Sahel.

Implicitly, the artist adds a jumble of letters dispatched in his works, thus composing his unreadable poems which carry the message of the importance of education and the transmission of knowledge, of the values ​​which guide him as a man and educator in the current chaos of Mali.

His paintings are a mirror of his daily life, that of his community and the forgotten cities of Mali, between doubt and hope, for himself and for others.