Nù Barreto

Monograph dedicated to the artist Nù Barreto. 
Texts by Franck Hermann Ekra and Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

Since childhood, drawing has been Nú Barreto's favourite medium. From that time, his works on paper have kept their imaginative verve, which he now puts at the service of his personal account of contemporary Africa. His graphic work is not tender, it is even mostly harsh and pungent. With the sharpness of his pencils and the blood red of his brushes, Nú Barreto illustrates the multiple violence that the continent has suffered. At the heart of this daily reality, the imperfect man plays the leading role. Like a mirror, this alter ego of black and red ink refers us to our own inconstancy and confronts us with our responsibility for the current situation in Africa: his body is deformed by pain and fear. In Nú Barreto's compositions, the absence of a background, as well as the absence of any spatial reference point, creates a feeling of vertigo.

Other fetish objects can be found in the works: the chair, with its broken leg, symbolises the chronic instability of African states; the ladder, with its broken rungs, is a metaphor for the broken social lift - the malfunctioning of which contributes to the rise in inequality. Nú Barreto's repertoire of symbols also includes animals (crows, pigs, chameleons, etc.) and objects that are no longer in use (bicycles, guitars, etc.). This panoply of symbols has its origins in the melting pot of West African indigenous cultures whose artistic productions use the power of signs. The artist adds to this the expressionist use of the colour red. The papers, torn or lacerated, also participate in the representation of a tormented landscape.