Bam! Zap! Pow!
The visual Dialogues between West and Africa in Comic-Inspired Art
24th of February - 15th of April
Superman flying over New York skyscrapers, Doraemon immersed in a sea of stylised daisies by Murakami, a pondering child in tears imagining Dora the explorer, an African Snow White posing for a portrait - no, it's not a comic book roundup, but these are some of the paintings on display at the exhibition 'Bam! Zap! Pow! Visual Dialogues between West and Africa in Comic-inspired Art'.
What links contemporary African art to American Pop Art? And what is the relationship between art and comics? These are precisely the questions that the exhibition "Bam! Zap! Pow! wishes to answer, exploring the creations of artists who are undisputed protagonists of contemporary art, such as Roy Lichtenstein, Mimmo Rotella, Takashi Murakami and Mr Brainwash. Alongside the well-known names on the international art scene, the Black Liquid Art Gallery, always attentive to the languages coming from the African continent, wished to include the works of African artists such as John Madu, Michael Soi, Tukayo Bailey, William Tagne Njepe, Demba Camara in whom the influence of comics is manifested in a primordial way, mixing the rich artistic tradition of the continent with the immediate and accessible language of cartoons.
In contemporary African art, this fusion has allowed artists to explore new modes of expression, helping to shape the global art scene in a significant way. This reading paves the way for an elevated interpretation of popular culture and mass media, challenging traditional art conventions.
Today, the relationship between comics and contemporary art is a journey of mutual inspiration. In order to fully understand how this connection has enriched both fields, it is necessary to analyse the evolution of the perception of comics over time and how this change has laid the foundations for a change in artistic canons towards an aesthetic closer to cartoons.
According to the American intellectual Gilbert Seldes, American culture must emancipate itself from the sense of inferiority of the so-called 'genteel tradition', i.e. the European artistic tradition. He emphasises that America possesses a vibrant and dynamic cultural heritage, creatively derived from popular culture. He transfers this analysis to contemporary African culture, where the influence of comics, which came late and only after decolonisation, immediately influenced the stylistic choices and the authentic and identity-based expression of their arts. Contemporary African art represents a case of successful cultural appropriation.
In an interconnected world, where West and Africa are engaged in an ongoing dialogue, cultural interaction has shaped a globalised aesthetic. African artists have skilfully learnt to navigate between tradition and modernity, proposing an expressive language that assumes a role of intellectual relevance.
In the vast production of comics from Africa and considering the rapid evolution that has taken place over the last twenty years, we have chosen to present an exemplification of African comics in the exhibition. Since we cannot be exhaustive, we have focused our attention on a group of creatives from Cameroon, namely the Zebra Comics group. We have selected webtoons narrating characters inspired by African history, culture and mythology.
The exhibition will also feature a selection of animated videos by the Kenyan group Fatboy Animation, which uses animation to advertise commercial products. The characters are a caricature of the Kenyan stereotype that, with humour, create paradoxical and funny situations.
Jonh MaduJohn Madu is an artist born in 1983, in Lagos, Nigeria, where he still lives and works today. As a self-taught artist with a bachelor’s degree in Policy and Strategic Studies, Madu has fully embraced an individual and eclectic style, both in terms of interdisciplinarity, having worked with a wide array of mediums such as acrylic paint, oil paint, spray paint, ink, burlap and collage, as well as themes explored and inspirations.
Much like his degree indicates, Madu’s art is deeply concerned with the complexity of identity, social behavior and the effects of cultural globalization on individualism, with recurring iconography such as books, apples, and other recognisable items, taking inspiration from a various range of influences and sources based on popular culture, African history, art history and personal experiences.
In “The Most Beautiful in the Kingdom”, Madu represents a black Snow White, holding a pumpkin covered in polka dots - very reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s work, whose obsessive use of polka dots in her own artwork is meant to immerse the whole person into her accumulations, intrusive thoughts, and repetitions, giving the audience a sense of infinity. Madu’s artwork frequently references other artists, such as Vincent van Gogh and Edward Hopper, through the appropriation of certain elements and motifs, in an attempt to legitimize and validate his own work as an artist.
In this case, Madu borrows Kusama’s polka dotted pumpkin, one of her most iconic figures, to reference the tale of Cinderella, a very well-known story of a princess who is transformed into a maid at midnight, her imponent carriage turning into a pumpkin. Likewise, the title of the painting indicates a connection to the world of fairytales, as these referred princesses are usually described as the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, a fact which contributes to both their royal status and the main conflict of the narrative. Hence, the multitude of references to artists and cartoons alike create a sense of understanding and recognition in the audience, who feels drawn to his work.
John Madu’s art has been exhibited both locally and internationally, including in the Hoxton Arches Galleries in London, the Tokyo Art Fair in Japan, the One Artspace Gallery in New York, and the Artyrama Gallery in Lagos.
91 x 136cm
“The Most Beautiful in The Kingdom” Michael SoiBorn in 1972 in Nairobi, Michael Soi's journey began as a sign painter, eventually establishing himself as a visual artist. After studying fine arts and art history, Soi joined the Kuona Trust in 1995, where he began his art career. Using his works to comment on the socio-political state of the world, Soi developed a keen eye and cartoonist's touch.
Michael Soi's paintings reflect contemporary Nairobi society, offering a mirror of the reality of the social, economic, and political conditions of urbanization in Kenya. Famous for his satirical commentaries, Soi highlights women's issues in Kenya, highlighting the way men view and treat women, criticizing the role they are often given as objects of pleasure.
Her distinctive style, characterized by a comic brush, is based on cartoon and comic book iconography, influenced by the tradition of Kenyan cartoonists who have satirized their country's society since independence. Soi's works stimulate conversations about the complex relationship between China and Africa, particularly Kenya, challenging the narrative that China loves Africa.
In "Fly Emirates," we are presented with a vibrant scene that encapsulates the essence of contemporary Kenyan society. The composition depicts three women in the foreground, all dressed in Fly Emirates shirts, vibrant lipstick, and one wearing sunglasses with flashy blue frames. This intentional choice of clothing and accessories suggests a connection to globalized consumer culture. The bus in the foreground becomes a stage where social dynamics play out, and Soi skillfully captures the complexities of gender roles, the objectification and commodification of women. The bus driver and a passenger, both looking at women's bodies, exemplify the objectification that women often experience in public spaces.
Participating in exhibitions both locally and internationally, Michael Soi has become a significant figure in contemporary African art, offering a unique perspective on the globalized world and the ever-changing development of modern Kenya.
“Fly Emirates”
102 x 142cm
Tagne William Njepe
Tagne William Njepe is an artist born in 1983, in Douala (Cameroon). He studied fine arts and printmaking at the Atelier Viking (Douala) and graduated in Technical Drawing from the Institut Polyvalent Nanfah of Douala in 1999, inspiring his technical painting style, predisposed to geometric forms and colorful environments.
In particular, “Enfance volée 1993 A7” (Stolen Childhood) is a painting which shows much of the artist’s personality, as it references his own infancy as a child in a single-parent household and a sick mother, a fact that forced him to start working at an early age and provide for his family. As such, the loss of youth is a key thematic element of Tagne William Njepe’s works. He uses his artistic voice to condemn child labor and bring attention to the right to education - in this case, through the depiction of a crying child, painted with cold, harsh tones, holding a broken doll’s head in one hand, as well as her own face with the other, in a typical childish manner. The child wears a small, possibly dirty shirt which reads “le temps de l’enfant est court et ne se retrappe pas” (“childhood is short and cannot be recovered”), a quote by Jacques Chirac which illustrates the artist’s own thoughts on the importance of maintaining one’s childhood intact, as well as the dangers of forcing someone to grow up too quickly.
Furthermore, the colorful, warm background filled with well-known cartoon characters, such as Maya the Bee, Dora the Explorer, and a small Mickey Mouse playing with airplanes, juxtaposes the cruel reality of the depicted child’s condition. It reflects the world of childlike sense of wonder the child should be experiencing instead, as cartoons play a big role in a child’s development and sense of safety and belonging in the world.
Tagne William Njepe is an internationally renowned artist, having participated in numerous exhibitions at both a national and an international level, including in Frankfurt, Germany.
“Enfance Volée 1993 A7 “ 146 x 112 cm
Demba Camara
Demba Camara is an Ivorian post-war and contemporary sculptor who was born in 1970 in Bouaké from a family of Guinea-born traditional sculptors. Now living in Abidjan, as an internationally renowned sculptor himself, he preferably works with wood and recycled materials. His sculptures often take the form of toys, more specifically anthropomorphic robots with metallic details, colorful tones and amusing face expressions. He has also worked on rocket ships, sea ships and other locomotive objects, always preserving their childlike quality.
“Dioneltac” and “Fetoubass”, both featured in this exhibition, are two examples of Camara’s quintessential robots: completed with exaggerated figures, emphasizing the different body parts in a humorous manner and creating funny facial expressions, as well as vibrant colors and robotic elements, these works highlight the artist’s African background and influences, as they reference the typical style of African sculpture through their use of geometrical shapes and bright colors. Furthermore, the robotic yet anthropomorphic and humorous elements are reminiscent of those of robotic toys for children, creating an image of innocence and childlike entertainment.
“Dioneltac”
71 x 25 x 30cm
“Fetubass”
50 x 18 x 17 cm
Tukayo
Tukayo is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist who primarily uses comics and expressive language to convey a social and political message, drawing on influences from American pop art to address issues such as international politics, social iquality, alienation, and mass media manipulation.
Although Tukayo remains an anonymous artist, placing himself in a position of impartiality and, therefore, inviting the audience to critically analyze his messages, his inclusion of superheroes of African or African American descent places the experiences of people of color and their narratives at the center of the discussion, contributing to a reflection on racial dynamics and empowerment, as well as the importance of inclusive representation in an increasingly diverse society.
Similarly, in “Breaking News,” Tukayo depicts a black superheroine dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, accompanied by her black panther cub, who reads the newspaper atop a skyscraper while surrounded by burning buildings. Through the symbolism of the black panther, Tukayo gives a nod to the Black Panther movement of the 1960s-1970s, depicting these activists as superheroes who confront real-world tragedies and bring justice to their people.
Moreover, through the use of a Wonder Woman costume, Tukayo emphasizes his pop art influences and her interest in American comics as political commentary, just as American comics were created as an American anti-Nazi propanga. The choice to depict Wonder Woman as a woman of color also shows her concern for representation in pop culture and the media, worrying about creating good role models for children of African or African American descent and having them entire considered.
Although her identity remains unknown, Tukayo has become an internationally recognized and admired artist, emerging as one of the most interesting new voices of the international art scene
“Breaking
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was an American artist born in 1923 and considered a key figure in 1960s Pop Art. Originally from New York City, Lichtenstein studied at the Art Students League and Ohio State University, earning a master’s degree in 1949. During the 1960s, along with artists such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, he revolutionized the art world by introducing images drawn from mass culture and comic books into his paintings. Lichtenstein is known for his works that mimic the comic book printing process, using sharp lines, bright colors and pointillist textures, often accompanied by baloons of text. His works have explored themes such as consumerism, advertising, war, and popular culture, questioning the boundaries between “high” and “low” art. His artistic output has had a lasting impact on contemporary art, influencing successive generations of artists and continuing to be the subject of international interest and study. Lichtenstein died in 1997, but his artistic legacy remains a pillar of 20th-century visual culture.
Presented in the exhibition is “Crak!” one of the most iconic works by American artist Roy Lichtenstein, created in 1963 during the most prolific period of his career, at the height of the Pop Art movement. This work is part of a series of paintings inspired by military comic books and comic book illustrations, particularly from the “Star Spangled War Stories” series, which Lichtenstein transforms and reworks according to his distinctive style.
In the painting “Crak!”, Lichtenstein captures a moment of tension and drama typical of action comics. At the center of the work is a female figure dressed in military garb, wearing a cap, intent on firing a rifle. The action is depicted dynamically, with the gunshot explosion in the center of the composition, symbolized by the onomatopoeic text “Crak!” expanding in large letters. The use of Ben-Day dots, a printing technique used in comic books, is evident in the depiction of tone and detail.
What makes “Crak!” significant is its ability to capture the essence of action comics while simultaneously underscoring the artifice and superficiality of mass images. Lichtenstein isolated a single frame from a larger context, highlighting the absurdity and artificiality of representations of war in popular media. Through his work, Lichtenstein challenges traditional notions of artistic beauty and invites viewers to reflect on the images and messages conveyed by mass media.
“Crak!” thus represents one of the pinnacles of Lichtenstein’s artistic expression and a landmark in the context of Pop Art, which continues to attract attention for its visual audacity and implied social critique.voices of the international art scene
"Crak ! ”
54 x 73cm
Mr, Brainwash
Thierry Guetta, most known under his moniker Mr. Brainwash, is a French-born, Los Angeles-based contemporary artist who walks the line between street art and pop art, using elements from pop art’s past and the raw components of his street art beginnings to create larger-than-life, imaginative exhibitions and collaborations which navigate between worlds of film, celebrity culture, music, and sports.
In the artwork currently featured in the exhibition, Mr. Brainwash takes an interest in the infamous comic book character Captain America, the United-States-themed superhero, as a nod to his pop art influences and general interest in the world of American pop culture. The use of a Captain America’s comic book cover juxtaposes the jarring splashes of color that stains it, very reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s modernist techniques, as well as the organic, fluid flows of color associated with street art, and, most specifically, graffiti.
The marriage between modernist techniques based on the use of a corporate, easily identifiable comic superhero character, which attracts the audience’s attention, and the free-flowing contemporaneity of the splashes of colors elevates this artwork into an original, visionary take on the work of fellow pop artists of the 60s.
Mr. Brainwash work extends his commitment to giving back to the community, as he continues to donate artwork in support of the Los Angeles LGBT center, created commemorative 9/11 murals to honor the victims, and partnered with Product RED to raise AIDS awareness.
“Mr.Brainwash” 130 x 99cm
Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami was born in 1962, Tokyo. Murakami took an interest in popular Japanese culture (manga, anime, and the larger otaku subculture) from a young age and had ambitions of becoming an animator. As he grew older, he went on to receive his BFA, MFA and PHD from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he studied Nihonga, a traditional style of Japanese painting.
In the 00s, he coined the artistic movement “Superflat”, characterized by the use of 2-d, flat imagery based on manga and anime from the 1970s, as well as flat planes of bright color. Hence, Murakami uses a typically Japanese cartoon style to produce a distinctly national body of work which both indulges the Japanese masses and the Western audience, as the cartoon characters used are widely recognizable and celebrated. It pokes fun at the Japanese consumer culture, with some works focusing on the otaku subculture and the sexualization of manga and anime characters, through the use of grotesque and distorted images, as well as parodies of lolicon art. Other works, however, are more concerned with the fear of growing up and the loss of innocence, being executed in a childish manner and presenting cartoons typically associated with one’s infancy.
In “First Love And I Contemplate About Dinner Tonight”, Murakami employed the Doraemon manga and anime series, recognized and beloved both in Japan and internationally, to create a scenery of joyful companionship, complete with a colorful background of smiling flowers. The usage of 2-d, flat animated pictures, with cute/kawaii motifs makes the artwork distinctly Japanese, but simultaneously recognizable to Western audiences. As Doraemon is a typical children’s cartoon which everyone would recognize from their childhood, aided by the colorful, childish background, this is an artwork that reminds its audience of their infancy and the innocence they have lost, emphasizing the fear of growing up inside each one of us.
Additionally, Murakami is the founder and President of the enterprise Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., a large art-making and artist management corporation through which he manages several younger artists, helping them gain international exposure. It was also through this factory that Murakami was able to digitally mass produce his works, very reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art practices.
“First Love and I Contemplate About Dinner Tonight” 60 x 60cm
Mimmo Rotella
Domenico “Mimmo” Rotella was an artist born in Catanzaro, Italy in 1918. Having graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, he became known for his works of décollage and psychogeographies, made from torn advertising posters. After a stay at the University of Kansas City in 1951 and 1952, Rotella suffered from an artistic crisis, during which he stopped painting, as he believed that there was nothing to be done again in art. Instead, he took an interest in the advertising poster as an artistic expression of the city. Hence, “décollage” was born.
Giving prominence to street language, the abstract and the poetic, “décollage” is an artistic technique with the opposite goal of the “collage”, meaning that instead of adding elements to an existing work, it starts from an artistic object from which the parts are detached. Inspired by the members of the New Dada, Rotella would superimpose two or more torn posters that he would find on the streets, giving an innovative artistic integrity to an otherwise common object, of little importance when removed from its natural environment.
In Mimmo Rotella’s present works, he takes inspiration from torn posters of the iconic American cartoon characters, such as Batman e Superman, superimposing elements from multiple different posters over one another. As such, Rotella retains their inherent urban components through the use of minimal language and raw, gritty surfaces. Furthermore, he highlights his Pop Art influences by accentuating the bright colors and by taking inspiration from popular American culture and media, much like most pop artists of the time. The result is a fragmented, broken composition just like our collective memory and imagination. The use of iconic American heroes emphasizes the criticism of consumer culture in the Western world, as the population is bombarded with advertisements and endless entertainment. These iconic American figures were created as American propaganda and entertainment during the II World War, quickly becoming part of pop culture, as well as embodying the encouragement and American values that the population desperately urged for at a time of global crisis.
After a lifetime of national and international success, including participations in exhibitions such as “Art et Pub” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1990) and “High and Low” at the Museum of Modern Art of New York (1990), Mimmo Rotella died in Milan on January 8, 2006 at the age of 88 years.
105 x 75cm
“Batman”
105 x 75cm
“Superman”
Bam! Zap! Pow!
The visual Dialogues between West and Africa in Comic-Inspired Art
24th of February - 15th of April
