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| By Nathalie |
“My passion for ceramics and creative arts
started since my childhood,” says Djakou Kassi Nathalie. She explores and experiments
with many media such as cement, copper, plaster, wood, iron but clay she says
remains her best medium, “in which, I engage the use of many techniques such as
modelling, engraving, carving and glazing.”
Nathalie's works are currently
on view at Moorehouse
Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria. In a joint exhibition with Ato
Arinze. Organised by Alliance
Francaise Lagos, in collaboration with Potters in Town and Moorehouse Hotel.
The ceramics
sculpture and pottery exhibition titled Beyond
Functions, opened on Saturday, November 12 and will close on the 19th of
November, 2016.
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| By Nathalie |
Arinze in
this show takes us back to the Mediterranean Sea with a piece titled: I Love Syria; depicting a toddler who
drown in the sea while migrating to Europe from Syria. Another piece titled Immigrant brings back to mind the number
of people who lost their lives at the sea in over loaded boats.
One cannot
but wonder how possible it could be for someone to document these events with
clay and still convey a message.
Arinze says
his thoughts, concept and feelings are influenced by nature and events, the
shape and forms of each work depends solely on his vision as inspired by
activities around him and world news.
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| By Arinze |
Arinze proves his love
for trees and nature in a good number of works. He makes an artistic statement
that purports the go green campaign that concedes to help our ecosystem from
dissolution by urban developments. 'Survival and Tolerance' is a ceramic piece
that displays the struggle of nature using visual personification. The tree
which signifies nature is in a twist that illustrates endurance and struggle
for mere existence.
“I love
Trees, I like to listen to their silent voices in nature, to reflect on their
salient lessons and how we as human can connect this teaches to our world. Time
was when trees were everywhere but today, we have lost them to concrete walls
in the name of developments; the environment is at a big loss for this reason.
“Hence we must
take the plant a tree campaign very serious. For those of us who lives in the
concrete jungle called cities, this clay sculptured trees are meant to serve as
a tool for meditation and contemplation aside the decorative functions of the
pieces.”
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| By Arinze |
He beliefs that
humans are affected by the challenges of life, seeking for better ways to make life
easy and free; “similarly, the trees in the forest faces greater challenges:
unlike human beings, with their innate sense of humilities they tolerate the
forces of nature and the selfish attitude of man in their destruction of the
ecosystem.”
The exhibition as the
name implies was organised to debunk existing ideologies that regard ceramics
as functional art pieces alone. In a work titled 'Chaos' by Nathalie, it displays
a domed clay surface with stylistic African faces of different sizes in
disarray. The faces, entangled in a chaos of patterns outlined with black may
be Nathalie's representation of the current state of Africa.
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