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Thomas Sankara may be dead however his soul is alive, a wellspring of motivation to numerous Africans, including specialists like Pierre-Christophe Gam, a Cameroonian-Chadian artiste. Gam titled his work The Upright Man “a blended media establishment offering a fanciful take a gander at the life and heritage of Thomas Sankara”.
The soul of Thomas Sankara is alive and striking. The figure and identity of the previous Burkina Faso pioneer has kept on being a wellspring of motivation not exclusively to the soul of the upheaval in his nation, yet in addition to craftsmen around the landmass, for example, Pierre-Christophe Gam.
Nigerian playwright Jude Idada earlier in the year wrote a play titled Thomas Sankara that was performed in Lagos. At the Dakar Art currently taking place in Senegal, another artist Pierre-Christophe Gam has kept the memory of Captain Sankara burning through his art pieces.
Gam, trained in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs and Central St. Martins in London exhibited his work at the just concluded DAK’ART. The Cameroonian-Chadian artist titled his work The Upright Man “a mixed media installation offering an apocryphal look at the life and legacy of Thomas Sankara, the late president of Burkina Faso.”
Gam, trained in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs and Central St. Martins in London exhibited his work at the just concluded DAK’ART. Photo: Facebook/Pierre-Christophe Gam
Gam took inspiration from the west African practice of “using printed textiles to share ideas and values” thus blurring “the boundaries between Art and Fashion by using fabric and pattern construction as a means to tell the story of this great African hero.”
Gam’s work sought to explore “Sankara, the myth, as the last prophet of Pan-Africanism.” A wide variety of techniques were used in the installation ranging from pencil colour drawing, pixel art, photography and digital manipulation.
The figure of Sankara on the continent still looms large. For many, he was the ideal African leader. Patrice Lumumba is another leader whose assassination shook the continent and left his country, the Democratic Republic of Congo in decades of chaos. Art preserves the memory of those we’ve lost. It could not be channelled to a better cause like remembering those African leaders who were victims of imperialism and greed.
