On the sidelines of the 20th edition of National Culture Week (SNC) Bobo 2023, visual artists Assane and Ousséni Ouattara are organizing from Saturday April 29 to Saturday May 6, 2023, an exhibition of masks, at the hotel la villa rose in Bobo-Dioulasso.
The exhibition of masks by visual artists Assane and Ousséni Ouattara (brothers) is held under the theme “The probity of the Masks and statues of Burkina Faso”.
About sixty masks of different ethnic groups from Burkina Faso are on display at the Villa Rose hotel.
According to the Ouattara brothers, the masks on display are copies of traditional masks but also of contemporary creation.
There is the buffalo mask from the bwaba country, the mask representing fertility, the altar of worship, the Nianinissou from the bobo country of SolenzoAccording to them, these masks speak of tradition, and are based on ancestral cultures of Burkina Faso that have not changed for centuries.
Before adding that the use of masks is based on everyday life.
For the Ouattara brothers, masks purify man and are books that contain the past and present of the Burkinabè people.
Burkina Faso is traditionally oral, the masks come to replace or take over from the oral tradition, faith of the visual artists.
"It's a legacy that we must not let down," said the Ouattara brothers.
Culture being the umbrella that protects Burkina Faso, Assane and Ousséni Ouattara urged young people to appropriate the endogenous and ancestral values contained in the masks, in particular integrity and probity.
Source: Burkina Information Agency