I offer you to discover some photographs of the Angolan artist Lola Keyezua that I discovered at the Movart gallery [Luanda in Angola and Lisbon in Portugal], as part of the Akaa 2021 fair. In recent years, African designers return to the the international scene with a lot of freshness and imagination, a lot of humor and derision. In the field of photography, women have carved out a prominent place with real technical work, both in substance and in form, to achieve real spiritual conceptions that have nothing to do with some of the shams which are often encouraged for purely mercantile ends.
Among the small art circle sttounding Gosette Lubondo and Etoundi Essamba is the young Lola Keyezua. If her photographic mastery is a little less accomplished than that of her prestigious colleagues, Lola manages through her works to forge a unique and singular bond with her readers [Fortia in 2017 and The Great Mamaaan 2020]. Each of her series contains several tales where each image is a story that fits into the multitude of tales to be discovered within each series. More than a tangle, each series is a mosaic of interchangeable Russian dolls that tell us about it.
The provocations are permanent and totally interdependent in their composition, contrast, and clarity. The image is not yet perfect; but, it already hypnotizes and generates the giddiness of the great stories.
An allegory in image in the purest oral and exceptional tradition of this continent.
Thierry Maindrault
