Until January 30, Casa África hosts the exhibition «218: Anansi. The architect.
By Adela Bogas.
The Equatoguinean illustrator Ramón Esono acts as the backbone of the exhibition «218: Anansi. The Architect”, in which the work of the famous Ivorian writer Bernard Dadié and the work of nine young creators delve into Anansi, one of the most relevant and universal figures of Akan culture.
The Akan culture spread throughout West Africa, crossing the borders of the Gulf of Guinea, from Togo to the Ivory Coast, branching into different families and towns that reach 12 million members. Accompanying gold and its trades, it was kidnapped in the bellies of ships that crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the American colonies, carrying with it its stories, arts and myths. Mainly monarchical and matrilineal, she wove stories between different worlds, many starring a character as atypical as adorable or detestable, depending on who is telling the story: the brilliant, selfish, decisive, mischievous and full of edges and nuances Anansi.
This weaver of stories, usually represented as a spider, human-spider or old man, is a fascinating creature, a friend of deception and subtlety and, in all probability, one of the most recognizable myths of African cultures. Not in vain, he has managed to cross geographical and mental barriers and comes to life in Western popular culture through the pen of recognizable and recognized authors such as Neil Gaiman, he allows himself cameos in the pages of the comics of justice league of america (DC Comics) or The Amazing Spiderman (from Marvel) and walks across the screen in cult series such asAmerican Gods.
Anansi stars in the exhibition that Casa África inaugurated in November, led by the Equatoguinean illustrator Nzé Ramón Esono Ebalé (1977) and eight students and one male student from the School of Art and Design of Gran Canaria (EASDC): Selena Baoli Artiles Ferrero, Lucía Gil Betancor, Julia Díaz Delgado, Eva González Ravelo, Paola Felipe Santana, Alex Hernández Lasso, Sandra Morales Félix, Ingrid Torres Herrera and Juan José Díaz García. The exhibition «218: Anansi. The Architect”, curated by Eduardo Caballero and present in the exhibition rooms of Casa África until January 30, is entangled between pen drawings, album books and skeins of wool, recreating symbolic universes present in African and Canarian oral traditions.
In the main part of the exhibition, the versatile Equatorial Guinean artist wanted to connect stories about power, resistance and identity and build with them worlds similar to those of Anansi, only armed with markers and pens that drew new cobwebs. In a separate room and guided by the mind and restless fingers of Esono, the EASDC students dialogued with stories by the Ivorian Bernard Dadié, translated by Pedro Suárez Martín and published by Baile del Sol and Casa África (2024) in “The Black Cloth.”
The part dedicated to the book-albums arises from a complex, laborious and sustained process over time: after training with Esono, gutting the stories and relating them to Canarian fables, the nine artists who participate in it created the visual universes of The Funeral of Mother Iguana, The Mirror of Scarcity, The Bat’s Relatives, The Dowry, The Yam Field, Spider and the Tortoise, L’enfant Terrible, The Spider’s Hump and Spider and His Son, all of them from Dadié.
The part drawn obsessively by Esono on cardboard and paper is dedicated to his two children and his partner, Heloísa, but it also expresses, in addition to his own struggles and obsessions in relation to power, the “connections” between African and Canarian fables, which in this exhibition are accompanied by a performance called “Sulrealismo system”, which claims that “silence is also a sound.”
Everything is tangled and traced as if Anansi were walking through the rooms, armed with his spider web and humming under his breath, at times evil and at times luminous, at times a spider and at times a person.
First, Nzé
Also known as Ramón Esono or Ham and Cheese, Nzé Ramón Esono Ebalé is one of the most recognized illustrators in Equatorial Guinea. Raised in Bioko, self-taught and of Fang culture, he affirms that drawing is part of his blood, of his being. Traveling through territories such as Paraguay, El Salvador, Spain or the Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea, he strives to capture and absorb certain elements of the context in which he creates to transform them into artistic expression and, in this way, reach another dimension of the sensitive.
Reflection on power occupies a central place in his work, as an area inseparable from the human, and commits him to his environment. Proof of this is that the publication in 2015 of the graphic novel Obi’s nightmare (self-published), in collaboration with two writers who decided to remain anonymous, led to his entry into Black Beach, from which he was released after six months of captivity. The Teodoro Obiang regime released him thanks to a powerful international campaign promoted by artists and organizations in defense of human rights and freedom of expression, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and PEN International. Another palpable proof of his commitment is the fact that he is the author, together with the journalist Pere Ortín, of the graphic novel ten thousand elephants (Reservoir Books, 2022), a journey through Spain’s colonial past in Equatorial Guinea.
Esono’s creations have received multiple recognitions, such as the 2017 Courage Award from the Cartoonists Rights Network or the 2017 Veu Lliure Award from PEN Català, and have been seen at the ARCO Fair in Madrid, the Feshcary center in Cameroon or the International Comics Festival in Algeria, among other places.
Like an Anansi spider web, the cartoonist builds, in his latest exhibition, a whole series of universes through the lines he makes with his pen, concentric towards power and expansive towards the dreamlike, the possible, science fiction, Afrofuturism. Through these displacements, Esono momentarily separates us from the established order to reveal its limits and it is in this transition towards the possible where a new perception of the real emerges.
Anansi and Bernard Dadié
Anansi, Anansy, Anancé are some of the names attributed to the mythical character of Ashanti origin, synonymous with skill and wisdom of language, but also with entanglement. He is a born trickster, who puts ingenuity before strength and who migrated to the Caribbean with the African diaspora associated with slavery to become a figure of cultural resistance. Anansi’s stories are interpreted as strategies to empower oneself, resist laughing, and generate behavioral models that helped endure the violence of the plantations.
It is said that, in the Akan tradition, he is credited with bringing stories to the world. In a famous myth, the supreme god Nyame had all the stories saved and Anansi managed to win them with his wits, thus becoming the owner of the tales. His belonging to the popular sphere has made it possible for a narrative and graphic figure like his to reinvent himself and survive in changing sociopolitical contexts.
Fighter against colony and injustice, committed politician, pillar of African and universal culture and wisdom, Bernard Binlin Dadié (see MN 693, pp. 48-50) died of pure old age at the age of 103, in Abidjan. The year was 2019 and he had not left his country, Ivory Coast, for years.
Of Nzima origin, therefore Akan, and in love with reading and stories since childhood, Dadié is part of the libraries of all of West Africa and the universe at the hands of Anansi, whom he narrated between songs and whispers so that we could not forget him.
He has an extensive list of recognitions to his credit, among which the Grand Literary Prize of Black Africa (1965 and 1968) and the Jaime Torres Bodet UNAM-UNESCO Prize (2016) stand out. The Palace of Culture in Abidjan was named after him in 2010 and the Ivorian Ministry of Culture and Francophonie created the most important literary prize in his country, also named after him, in 2014. Among the laureates are Charles Nokan, Véronique Tadjo, Josué Guébo, Serge Bilé, Gauz, Tiburce Koffi, Macaire Etty and Fidèle Goulyzia, who received it within the framework of the Abidjan African Book Hall and its palace.
Although it is impossible to do justice to his more than centenary career in a couple of pages, it can be highlighted that he created a literary genre, the chronicles, and that he signed plays, stories, novels, journalistic texts and poetry, whose publication extends from the appearance of a satirical farce in 1933, Les Villes (The cities), to a collection of articles and conferences, Cailloux blancs (White Stones), in 2004. At the time of his death, his obituaries declared that Dadié was “the most prolific writer of black African literature and, along with Léopold Sédar Senghor, the most translated.”
As a public figure, Dadié spent 16 months in prison in Bassam for fighting against French settlers before independence. Subsequently, he served as Minister of Culture between 1977 and 1986 and, in 2000, he participated in the drafting of the Ivorian Constitution. He was active in various parties and organizations and positioned himself, unfailingly and until almost the day of his death, at every critical crossroads in the history of the Ivory Coast, whether it be called a coup d’état, civil war or post-electoral crisis.
His challenges to the governments in power were constant, even when the rest of the world was silent. He paid for it with prison, harassment and ostracism in life, but with immortality in our libraries and even, and with the help of stories like those of Anansi, in exhibition halls like those of Casa África.
