Meet the artists
Amazing pieces need amazing creators
We have selected these artists for their talent but also for their commitment, their vision of the world and their ability to create a better world.
Issouf Bonkoungou
Issouf learned how to make lost wax bronzes from an early age on his father's lap. In Burkina Faso, it is an art that is passed down from father to son.
Growing up, he decided to improve his skills and wanted to go further to develop his skills and sufficient background to explore his own artistic universe.
He thus carries out training by the craft center in order to supplement the know-how transmitted by his father and to free his creativity to design new models.
He begins to differentiate his production on the local market.He continues every day to seek new ideas, new techniques, new styles and everything to improve his art and the quality of his products.
He also made some important choices. In Burkina Faso, those who work with artists are paid for the task. But if the activity is insufficient, there is no salary. So from the start he decided to train and hire his apprentices to pay their salaries, give them a share in company decisions and give them bonuses on profits.
But it's not just about money, every week they all meet to share new ideas, share the difficulties they may have and the solutions they have been able to find. Everyone has a say in improving their style or the organization of the workshop. He created a large family dedicated to improving a common art.
Boureima Ouedraogo
Born in Ouagadougou in 1982, Boureima began drawing on school benches before working on bogolan and indigo with a Dogon artist. But very quickly he became familiar with the art of bronze, which became his real field of expression.
If some people see in his work the influence of Dali or Jacometti, Boureima feels much more influenced by Thomas Sankara and his quest for freedom.
Indeed, he is an artist who seeks above all meaning and consistency.
Its claims are made with poetry, tenderness and humor through the research of the animal side present in each of the men.
In 2006, he received the 1st prize for creativity from UEMOA at the SIAO (Salon International de l'Art et de l'Artisanat de Ouagadougou) and the 3rd prize during the National Culture Week (SNC) but his work , still confidential, is far from having completed the conquest of hearts...
Boukary Bonkoungou (aka Yambou)
Boukary, like his brother, learned bronze work from an early age.
Having grown up in a bronze workshop, he learned all the techniques there alongside his father and his brothers.
But at 23, he took off and joined his two eldest children at the National Center for Crafts in Ouagadougou.
Little by little he sets himself apart from tradition and asserts a unique style combining bronze, wood and iron to develop his own universe and his own approach.
Because although a bronze artist, his works are often inspired by a piece of wood from which he projects his universe to bring it to life.
Very committed, his works question life and our emotions. Sometimes described as dreamlike or literary, sensitive or uncompromising artist, everyone will know how to transpose their own puzzles into their art.