In just a few years, Aristide Kouame’s original methods have caught the attention of the establishment
Ivorian painter Aristide Kouame, who paints optical effects artworks with worn soles, works at his workshop in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on August 4. Picture: REUTERS/LUC GNAGO As Ivorian artist Aristide Kouame combs the beach with a big trash bag to gather discarded flip-flops and other footwear, he is aware that other beachgoers probably take him for a desperate street trader or possibly a madman.
“This is the rubbish people have thrown into the sea and the sea brings it back to us because it doesn’t want it,” he said on a beach in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital.Sitting on the floor of a narrow alley, Kouame carves shapes, letters and faces into the rubber soles of what he has salvaged from the beach. He makes his own paint by grinding what scraps remain into piles of technicolour pigment.
They range from large portraits of civil rights and political leaders such as Nelson Mandela to abstracts evoking societal ills including climate change, Covid-19 and wealth inequality. Its director enthusiastically ushered patrons towards three large collages, each consisting of around 140 miniature portraits that Kouame carved from discarded flip-flops.
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