Nestor Da is a Burkinabé artist who was born in 1982. He has presented his work in several solo shows in both Africa and Europe. His series “L’ombre des images” was featured at the Mainssieux Museum (Voiron, july 2010), at “La Vitrine” (Arles, April 2010), and at the French Cultural Center George Melies of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso, 2009). Additionally, his artwork has been featured in collective exhibitions such as “Biennale Benin 2012: Inventer le monde” where he was awarded the French Institute Incentive Prize.Nestor Da also won first prize of the Blachere Fondation at the “Biennale Bamako 2009”, which provided him with a 6 months lartist residency in the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Photographie located in Arles, France.
This academic training granted him access to the world of photography and helped him develop his techniques and competences. Nestor Da turns to techniques such as decoupage, collage, and incorporates paint to his own images in order to transform and reconstruct them. This process gives way to a maquette that the artist then shoots creating a photograph as the final piece.
At first sight, “Ondes de Perturbation” which is composed of 40 images, disturb. The series seems to be announcing something: a changing world. The waves symbolize the impact of humans on nature. The accumulations reflect the pollution and invasion of man-made objects. The disruption represents both the transformation of natural materials and the second life given to those materials through recycling.
Nestor Da’s creative approach is very similar to that of photomontage but he also draws his inspiration from expressionist paintings and even Graffiti art. His images are always poetic; dazzling and expressive like a wave, but also elusive. The series “Ondes de perturbation” seems to be extracted from a tale. The artist plays with reality and symbolism. The bright colors strike the viewer and both the material and pattern used challenge our perception of the world.
In his pieces, the artist distorts reality, yet we still can see that they deal with the pollution and overconsumption that affect countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast as well as France where he has lived. The series is very universal and contemporary. Nestor Da’s body of work has the particularity of always display a fresh vision of the world that surrounds us and also brings the viewer to ponder.
For his very first exhibition at the Gallery Cecile Fakhoury, the artist incorporated his designs within an installation structured around the desire of drawing a horizon to create a visual complexity. Each image the viewer comes across in his trajectory is a piece of our modern history. On the ground, in the center of the space, is a black rectangle made out of pieces of coal. Contained within a precariouslayout,the dark rocks reveal the annunciation of the industrial era. This opaque pool stands as ahistorical marker of a chronicle of the environment.