Abu Bakarr Mansaray, an artist engineer at the City of Science

Un Sierra Leonean artist at the City of Science and Industry? A priori, one might find the idea strange. Looking at the work of Abu Bakarr Mansaray, an artist with a supercharged scientific and technical imagination, we can only agree. If this is his first solo exhibition, at the age of 52, he has already participated in a dozen major exhibitions including the Venice Biennale in 2015 and “The Initiates” at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris in 2017.

Discovered by André Magnin

His very particular work, sculptures and technical drawings of flying objects, whether identified or not, was discovered in 1991 by the art critic André Magnin. The latter in search of an artist, John Goba, whom he eventually found while traveling through Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, stumbled upon the metal sculptures of a young man, Abu Bakarr Mansaray. “The objects he was selling looked ultra-sophisticated, like engineer’s constructions. These were models of machines that breathed fire or operated mechanical parts. To develop these parts, he used motors from refrigerators, machines or coffee grinders, ”recalls André Magnin. He was then working for the Italian billionaire Jean Pigozzi, who had commissioned him to build his collection of contemporary African art. Abu Bakarr shows him a sketchbook. “I had before me an incredible succession of plans and projections, with pages of calculations, notes and formulas. I showed it to an engineer friend who confirmed to me the veracity of certain principles developed by Abu Bakarr, ”explains André Magnin.

“The drawings were preparatory work. they were not works, in his eyes. You have to imagine in the early 1990s, in Sierra Leone, selling a drawing, that does not exist. The art market does not exist. The sculptures appeared more like decorative items or fun items. He is not aware of being in an artistic process, nor of being an artist in the sense that we can understand him in a Western way. He creates these objects because he feels the need and the desire ”, explains Gaël Charbau, curator of the exhibition.

An artist marked by war

When André Magnin discovers it, the country plunges into chaos. A civil war that will ravage the country for a decade and today considered one of the most violent on the continent. Drugged child soldiers, forcibly recruited by warlords, will sow terror in a country where the stake is called blood diamonds, the money of the diamonds being used to buy weapons and to continue the war.

Abu Bakarr Mansaray can no longer find the material to create his sculptures, André Magnin then advises him to concentrate on the drawings and to give free rein to his imagination. In 1998, soldiers put him on a plane. He ended up with wife and children in the Netherlands. He will remain there until 2013. The drawings of this period are crossed by the violence of the war which haunts the artist.

Drawings and sculptures evoke a world of machines

The nine drawings and two sculptures presented at the Cité des sciences, on loan from Jean Pigozzi’s collection of contemporary African art, immerse us in a universe of machines, ultra-sophisticated planes, flying saucers and improbable techniques such as a “Nuclear telephone discovered in hell” … In this imaginary world that he shapes, a “Digital man”, a “Witch plane”, or a “Metal Falcon”, Abu Bakarr Mansaray draws with pencil and pen machines accompanied by legends and explanatory diagrams in great detail. Sometimes he adds touches of color. The precision of the drawing recalls that of the technical drawings drawn with a rotring, with gears, wheels, bolts …

An artist on his planet

About ten years ago, he returned to Guinea and Sierra Leone. “With the money he earned, he bought land, gold fields, it seems, built houses, bought 4x4s. Since then, he has made his money grow. He is often in the bush and it is difficult to reach him, ”says André Magnin. “We’re only on a call when he text me, he calls me his daddy.” In general, he asks me for money or places orders, ”continues the latter maliciously. It takes him between six months and a year to make a large drawing. No need to consider a meeting, to count on meeting him during a vernissage, the artist lives in his world, on his planet.