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159 - Seyni Awa CAMARA (Casamance, 1945-2026) Terracotta H: 179 cm…
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Estimate €6,000 - €8,000
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Description
Seyni Awa CAMARA (Casamance, 1945-2026) Terracotta H: 179 cm Base. Restoration to the right foot *** Fired clay, on base, 70½ in. high Provenance : Private collection, France. Acquired from M.Correia, Zinguichor, 2015. A veritable vertical totem, this sculpture with its stack of eagles embodies a powerful form of Seyni Awa Camara's visual vocabulary. Revealed to the international public at the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition, the artist has developed a deeply inhabited body of work, nourished by an initiatory experience in the sacred forest of Casamance. Trained in pottery by her mother from a very early age, she refers to her sculptures as her "little monsters": each one is preceded by a period of withdrawal when, in her words, "everything becomes possible". The figure of the eagle - a symbol of height and movement between worlds - gives the work an upward dynamic. The stacking of forms builds an axis between the earthly and the celestial, in a constant tension between anchorage and elevation. Shaped in clay and fired in the open air, the sculpture retains the raw strength of the material: stylised and expressive, the forms are part of a language in which repetition and variation make sense. Seyni Awa Camara was born in the village of Bignona, in Casamance, in the south of Senegal, where she still lives and works today. She expresses her extravagance, her fantasies and the "evil spirits" that animate her in her enigmatic half-men, half-women, half-monsters, giving birth to mischievous, cheeky little offspring. In her work, the mystical rubs shoulders with the profane, the real with the imaginary. She models in the earth: tenderness, the smile of the mother, the roughness of the material, the beings of the forest, the lorries where the woman holds the steering wheel, the animals of the bush, or the cars with wheels in the shape of flowers. She makes a mockery of standards and gives free rein to her imagination. She bakes her creatures, erotic sculptures and other monsters in a very rudimentary kiln, a simple hole dug in front of her house. She is currently considered to be Africa's greatest "art brut" potter.
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About the sale Arab, African & Indian Modernities
Auction location
Auction time 06/18/2026 at 2:30 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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