TOGO: A sculptor in Togo is fighting a tough battle to earn his living from his art

Record ID: 453208

  • Title: TOGO: A sculptor in Togo is fighting a tough battle to earn his living from his art
  • Date: 28th July 2007
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF DANCERS DANCING AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF A NEW MUSEUM
  • Embargoed: 12th August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Togo
  • Country: Togo
  • Reuters ID: LVA5J4R2GAW2TJ2B4NATINM2QK8
  • Story Text: Sadikou Oukpedjo is a sculptor in Togo who's determined to live off his art despite the odds. Most people in Togo consider buying art an unaffordable luxury and many in his community even consider them sinful.
    Patiently and with passionate care, Sadikou Oukpedjo carves and chisels a block of wood until an expressive face emerges.
    "This piece is entitled 'Everyone's view'. We all have our own view on things, depending on where we stand. We could be four people walking in the same direction and each one of us will see something different," said Oukpedjo.
    Sadikou established himself as a sculptor four years ago after studying art in Togo's capital, Lome.
    It wasn't an easy career choice. The life of every young African artist is paved with obstacles - even more so for Sadikou; he is a Muslim and some interpretations of Islam prohibit representations of living things.
    At first his own family didn't accept his vocation and Sadikou was forced to move out. But he wasn't prepared to give up either his art or his religion, and believes that the two can co-exist.
    Like many African countries, Togo doesn't have much money to spend on art and culture, and most local artists have to survive without any government support.
    Another problem is that few people in Togo understand art, because it isn't taught in schools. Sadikou thinks that religion also played a part in denigrating traditional art.
    "When religion first arrived in Africa, be it Christianity or Islam, it right away condemned sculptures as well as other forms of representative art like paintings, and it stayed stuck in people's heads.
    Which means that today when they see a sculpture they think it's not something to be around," he added.
    But last February, a bold initiative set out to change all that: a new museum was opened in Lome with the specific objective of teaching young people in Togo about African art.
    The International Museum of the Gulf of Guinea displays 1600 pieces from private collections of Rene David and his wife Enam - both experts on African art.
    "This museum will give the foreign tourists as well as locals the opportunity to take in almost the whole African continent at once.
    These works of art are not dead, they're alive and their message is one of cultural diversity," said Gabriel Dosseh anyron, Togo's minister of culture during the opening ceremony of the museum.
    The museum's ambition is to help people in Togo recognize the richness of their culture and better understand the work of their own artists.
    For Sadikou and other contemporary artists, it will no doubt be a new source of inspiration - and one day, their own works might even find a place in the museum.
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