About Us

Africa has a thousand ethnic groups, more than 2000 languages, all of which represent different perceptions of the world and different ways of addressing its sensitivity.
Africa’s main richness does not lie in its subsoil, its mines or its biodiversity, but in the extraordinary creativity of its peoples. Just as in Flanders or Renaissance Italy, beauty has been tamed. Throughout time, African arts have never stopped making people dream, featuring original works and powerful happenings. Fascinating, just like the griots, aedes philosophers, conveying age-old wisdom in storytelling and laughter. Fascinating, just like Miriam Makeba, Oum Kaltoum, poetesses of liberation who became legends and are still carried through the frequencies of old sizzling radios.

And what about fetishes, enigmatic masks, tapered or swollen, ranging from dark colors to bright ones? Famous and phantasmagorical incarnations of African art, they sometimes appear to come to life. These traditional designs should not distract us from more contemporary, inventive, surprising productions. The past, source of infinite inspiration, will never be that far away.

Artwork by Samba Diallo

 

Between the age of Tassili’s cave paintings and that of Chéri Samba or David Kuijers’ paintings, a universe opened up. Within this universe hatched the literature of Phyllis Weathley, Aimée Césaire, or Walter Mosley. Similarly, the inevitable Jazz and its virtuosos, icons of the dandies, have appeared. On another level, capoeira blended combat with dance, right under the slavers’ noses.

A dramatic history has led the African masterminds to every corner of the earth, making Black Art, not without a delightful irony, “an empire on which the sun never sets”. A remarkable singularity, this conquest was peaceful. However, one difficulty remains, what some might call “the problem of the rich”. How can one find his or her way in this immensity, this artistic luxuriance?
Black expressions have never had so many followers. These expressions have managed to reach the hearts and souls of millions of people beyond the African or Afro-descendant populations. A diversified range of creators, amateurs, patrons and aesthetes are the driving forces of this movement.

Blawo, with more than 55 000 subscribers on its social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest), wants to address this community, but also newcomers brought in by popular culture. Faced with this turmoil and artistic proliferation, it became urgent to implement a more suitable structure. Blawo had to rethink itself.
Firmly rooted in its African heritage, the company remains open to all influences. It advocates democratization, as well as the promotion of artworks and their authors without any distinction. Its founder has always rejected discrimination and the ethnocentric shackles. Art serves concord and should not fuel identity competitions.

A creation only reaches its true potential when it transcends its geographical and social boundaries. Universalism is at the core of the BLAWO, Black art in the world project.

NACER NEMER, Blawo Team.