Untitled (2014)
Armand Boua’s paintings portray the unfortunate plight of children that loiter about in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, following the years of political and social upheaval that left the country unstable. In so doing, the artist seeks to inform his audience about the lives of these adolescents who do not have access to proper educational opportunities and are forced to live under undesirable conditions.
In Untitled, these children are portrayed as anonymous figures who are congregated at an unidentifiable location—perhaps the corner of an abandoned street—as if to suggest the universality of such an experience among the Ivorian youth. The laborious process of layering and scrubbing acrylic paint and tar flattens the figure and ground into one seamless whole, while simultaneously replicating the industrial texture of urban infrastructure. The rough surface of the painting thus serves as a poignant metaphor for the life as experienced by the children in the Ivory Coast.
