Ivory Coast artist Aboudia – ‘I’m not shocked I’m a best-seller’

Again in September, international artwork specialists had been stunned by the identify topping a contemporary checklist of the world’s best-selling artists.

Aboudia, a graffiti-inspired artist from Ivory Coast, had crushed well-known names, like Damian Hirst and Banksy, to promote essentially the most items at public sale the earlier 12 months.

Based on the Hiscox Artist Prime 100, Aboudia, actual identify Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, had flogged 75 heaps. One among these canvasses had gone for £504,000 (£640,000).

Main on-line market Artsy known as Aboudia’s triumph “striking”, whereas The Guardian mentioned market specialists had been “blindsided” by the rating.

Months later, sat in a London gallery plastered together with his work, Aboudia tells me the survey outcomes had been “no shock” to him.

“As a result of when you work laborious, the success goes to come back,” he says, dressed fully in black save for wristfulls of beaded bracelets.

“The very first thing is your work… after, every thing comes residence.”

Aboudia’s mellow disposition clashes with the artwork surrounding him – his vividly colored, closely layered canvases function a solid of cartoon-like figures plucked from the streets of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest metropolis.

By a mix of oil sticks, acrylic paints and recycled supplies like newspapers, Aboudia depicts the hardships of life in downtown Abidjan. He significantly focuses on the youngsters who stay and work on town’s streets.

His eyewitness portrayals of Ivory Coast’s 2011 civil warfare are equally arresting. Figures gaze on the viewer with vacant eyes, whereas armed troopers and skulls crank up the depth.

Aboudia says that immediately, there is a false impression that his rise to the highest “got here rapidly”.

“No – I labored like 15 or 10 years for that.”

Aboudia was born in 1983, in Abengourou, a small city round 200km (124 miles) from Abidjan. In a 2012 essay, the artist mentioned he was kicked out of his residence aged 15 after telling his father he needed to color for a residing.

After being solid out, the younger Aboudia pressed on and enrolled in artwork college. On account of an absence of economic help, he slept in his classroom after the opposite college students went residence for the day. These uncomfortable nights paid off – after graduating in 2003 the soon-to-be-star was accepted into Ivory Coast’s main artwork college, École des Beaux-Arts.

Abidjan’s École des Beaux-Arts would expose Aboudia to the Ivorian artwork icons whose affect will be present in his present work. As an illustration, Aboudia’s deal with his direct environment and his use of recycled supplies will be traced again to Vohou Vohou, a modernist collective established within the Seventies by artists like Youssouf Bathtub, Yacouba Touré and Kra N’Guessan.

Aboudia started to veer away from conventional types of artwork, as a substitute utilizing untamed brushstrokes and earthy colors to recreate graffiti produced by Abidjan’s underprivileged kids.

In Aboudia’s phrases, these younger, de facto avenue artists “draw their goals on the world”.

The youngsters are his essential affect, he says, and never the wildly well-known, American graffiti artist-turned-painter that his work is commonly likened to.

“After I began working, I did not know [Jean-Michel] Basquiat,” Aboudia says.

“It wasn’t like: ‘There’s an individual known as Basquiat, there’s an individual known as Picasso’ as a result of there wasn’t web on the college and so they did not discuss these artists.”

After establishing his core model, Aboudia would lug his work across the galleries of central Abidjan, hoping for a approach in.

“It was very laborious… they’d say: ‘Are you loopy? What is that this work? You higher go to London, to United States or Paris, as a result of this work… right here it does not make sense’,” Aboudia remembers.

The adversity didn’t finish there. In 2010, Laurent Gbagbo, the then president of Ivory Coast, refused to step down after dropping an election to rival Alassane Ouattara. A civil warfare broke out, killing 3,000 individuals and forcing one other 500,000 from their houses.

All through the four-month battle, Aboudia sought refuge in his basement studio, documenting the horrors he noticed when venturing above floor.

The warfare ended with Mr Gbagbo’s dramatic seize by UN and French-backed troops – and Aboudia emerged from his haven with 21 disconcerting work.

Artwork-lovers and journalists from Ivory Coast and past lauded his work and Aboudia’s ascent to international success started.

He was championed by famend artwork collectors Charles Saatchi and Jean Pigozzi – and went on to exhibit his work at prestigious venues like Christie’s New York and the Venice Biennale.

Aboudia’s first solo exhibition was on the setting for this interview, London’s Larkin Durey (then named the Jack Bell gallery).

Proprietor Oliver Durey, who has now identified Aboudia for over a decade, tells the BBC: “There’s something we will all relate to in his work; hiding amidst the uncertainty and horror there are balanced moments of energy and sweetness.”

African artwork knowledgeable Henrika Amoafo says Aboudia’s artwork “form of matches the worldwide thought of Africa representing warfare” and different types of strife.

There are different causes for his success although, like his “authenticity, the actually uncooked emotional energy that he is capable of convey, the best way that he speaks to city life, the best way that he speaks about battle and its influence on kids”, says Ms Amoafo, an govt at ADA Modern Artwork Gallery in Ghana.

Aboudia’s rise additionally coincides with that of the African artwork market. In 2021, artwork evaluation agency ArtTactic reported that the public sale gross sales worth of up to date and trendy African artwork surged by 44% to a document excessive of $72.4m (£56.9m).

ArtTactic has additionally discovered that whereas the worldwide artwork market declined by 18% final 12 months, Africa’s solely shrunk by 8.4%.

In its 2024 assesment of the trade, Hiscox didn’t embrace a rating of best-selling artists by the quantity of all artworks bought, because it did in 2023.

Nevertheless, it named Aboudia because the sixth most profitable artist relating to items bought for lower than $50,000 (£39,300).

Aboudia’s rise has led to him splitting his time between his nation of beginning and New York. When he’s again in Ivory Coast, he pours his efforts into the Aboudia Basis, an organisation he launched to help the nation’s kids and younger artists.

That is yet one more instance of the star’s drive – however after I ask him if he has any plans lined up for his profession, he solutions plainly: “No, I haven’t got that.”

After I press him, he says he takes issues at some point at a time – maybe a soothing antidote to over a decade of tenacity.