Casamançan - Senegal (No reserve price)

Senegalese sculptor.

Seni Awa Camara is among those artists who were introduced to the scene of African contemporary art in 1989 by the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, and whose works were acquired and disseminated by Jean Pigozzi in the wake of the show. Like many other artists highlighted in 1989, S. A. Camara did not initially intend her production for the international art market and instead confined it to a local market: that of the Casamance village where she was born, Bignona. If she still resides there, S. A. Camara now exports her sculptures around the world. Oscillating between craft and naive art, her creations spring directly from the artist’s imagination, without her ever justifying their origins, meanings, or possible interpretations. Taking the form of strange creatures, sometimes bicéphalic, often built from a common trunk on which multiple bodies of children or animals appear, her sculptures evoke scenes of maternity, draw on the Casamance natural environment, as well as on a broad animal bestiary.