en collaboration avec l’anthropologue Richard Fardon, Head of the Doctoral School at SOAS, University of London • 2017
project Cover illustrations and inner pages (as well as graphic design and production as graphic designer)
technique India ink and digital coloring and watercolors
texts Richard Fardon
publisher Hurst Publishing
specifics 13,9 x 20 cm • 134 pages • bound
to see my work as designer graphic >>> agnesboulmer.com
This book was the fruit of a collaboration with the anthropologist Richard Fardon, based on the written and film work Xala by the Senegalese author Sembene. After a research trip to Dakar, we exchanged ideas and worked, each in his or her field of expertise, to offer a particular vision of Xala.
It is the story of a man that a spell made impotent. Xala brings up the question of postcolonialism and the treachery of those who forget their origins to behave in their turn as colonizers. Apart from this eminently political aspect, the work evokes, in a Buñuel-type atmosphere, the traditional use of rituals, spells and the breaking of spells and these elements particularly interested me: I decided to draw from a supernatural and metaphorical viewpoint, readily using emblematic elements from Western Africa, from the mascarade to the cowry shells that are scattered through the texts.
