in collaboration with the anthropologist Richard Fardon, Head of the Doctoral School at SOAS, University of London • 2017
project Graphic design and production • Cover and inner pages illustrations
illustrations techniques India ink and digital coloring and watercolors
texts Richard Fardon
publisher Hurst Publishing, London
manufacturing 13,9 x 20 cm • 134 pages • bound • printed in two colors
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.
Xala depicts the story of a man that a spell made impotent. The book 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.
