Serge Hélénon (born 1934, Martinique)
Untitled (Expression Bidonville), 1984
Mixed media, wood, metal and painted sand
57 × 40 cm
Bibliography
A. Parinaud, D. Radford, P. Wicart, Hélénon, Montreuil, 1991, p. 200
Negro-Caraïbes and Vohou-Vohou: Reweaving the Memory of the World
Three. They were three. Louis Laouchez (1934-2016), Serges Hélénon (1934); Mathieu-Jean Gensin (1934). Three brothers from Martinique, all born in 1934 and all residents of the School of Decorative Arts in Nice, France. Three they were, painters who found themselves in Côte d’Ivoire together, in echo with the aesthetics of negritude, and who founded in 1970, the Negro-Caraïbes movement.
The three artist professors garnered followers in the colleges and at the School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, where a dozen students, galvanized by their practice resolutely open to abstraction, developed a group dynamic and launched their own movement under the label of Vohou-Vohou. The term Vohou is a pejorative term, an onomatopea that designates in Gouro, an Ivorian language, what is considered "garbage" or "whatever". Over the years, Vohou Vohou was improved by the teachings and experiences received by its members at the workshop of Jacques Yankel (1920-2020) at l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the late 1970s. From the beginning of the 1980s, Vohou-Vohou figures from the Abidjan school were put in parallel with the Dakar school created under President Léopold Sédar Senghor. In Abidjan as in Dakar, artists and intellectuals activated processes of reappropriation of the memory of cultural values lost under the colonial situation of their countries. They underlined a cultural, social and political quest.
It was a rupture and a paradigm shift. The group led by N'Guessan Kra (1954), Théodore Koudougnon (1951), Youssouf Bath (1949) detached itself from the two trends that dominated the tastes of the public and the market: figurative realism on one hand, and marvelous realism of the so-called naive painting on the other.
Michel Kodjo (1935-2021), Monné Bou (1948) and James Houra (1952-2020) were the leading figures of the figurative trend. Christiane Achalme (1929-2019), Zéphirin, Losseni (1959-2009), Idrissa Diarra (1969-2015) and Augustin Kassi (1959) officiated for the naive. Zéphirin was one of the first to accumulate success in exhibition halls and public commissions, before disappearing into space and time. Unlike Idrissa Diarra whose "tropical forests" communicated advanced ecological messages, Zéphirin wanted to embrace the urban, again and again. Better than postcards, his series of buildings and bridges, his reports of official visits of personalities and politicians, his chronicle of daily life, have made a school and tradition. His paintings are rare and sought after.
The artists of Vohou-Vohou took a side step, elsewhere. Using local materials, they explored the intrinsic resources of painting in context. They experimented with new materials including found objects. Among the few women who were part of the group, was, Ernestine Meledge. Born in 1961, she participated in the double adventure of the Schools of Fine Arts in Abidjan and Paris. Inspired by the generational rites and celebrations of the Adjoukrou country, where she was from, she transfered on her canvases the materiality of colors and the brightness of celebrations. Her colors are not only refreshing, but they also exude a powerful, peaceful vibrance.
They were three. Together they started a world tour that connected the Caribbean to Africa, then Africa to Europe. Fort de France-Nice-Bamako-Ouagadougou-Fort de France- Abidjan-Nice-Fort de France, Louis Laouchez, Serges Hélénon and Mathieu Gensin are not only witnesses of the history of modern art in Africa, they were also the actors, the movers and shakers of history. In 1966, Louis Laouchez took part in the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar. In 1969, in Ouagadougou, he was present at the inauguration of the week of cinema that would become the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). Eventually, he settled down in Abidjan, in a Côte d'Ivoire that was in full economic and social expansion. There, he was able to build a practice open to the urban environment as much as to the resources of nature, whose significance vibrates with narratives pearled with myths and myths, legends and stories and which once again, weaved together the links between Africa and the Caribbean, moved the body of the ancestors, questioned the haunting disasters in Haiti and elsewhere, quoted the filmography of Jean Rouch, transcending totems and taboos.
— Yacouba Konaté ©2021
Félix Houphouët-Boigny University, Abidjan
Honorary President of AICA
