Appolinaire Guidimbaye (Doff)

Appolinaire Guidimbaye, (artist’s alias “Doff”) is a self-taught full-time Chadian artist working in mixed media with special emphasis on non-traditional art materials and found objects. Nicknamed Doff (“the fool” in the Wolof language) for his brave scavenging expeditions to dump sites in search of scrap materials for his bricolages – rusted metals, electronic equipment parts, discarded clothing items – he gained recognition for the ingenious ways in which he puts to creative use almost any material that others simply dispose of. He has been exhibiting his work since the age 20 in Africa and Europe, and We Are Afrika is his first exhibition in the United States.

The two themes closest to Appolinaire’s heart are environment and humanity.

His visual manifesto in defense of the environment is the positive use, as he describes it, of a broad range of materials and items which the present-day society tosses away with an ease greatly superseding the effort once put in their production. For example, the component parts of his compositions are often held in place with the help of a framework of steel wires recuperated from burnt down tires. The most terrifying of these materials, which, unfortunately, is readily available in Chad, is used bullet shells of different metals and calibers. Collected in battlefields of the 21st century, they often feature in Doff’s 3D sculptural murals as soldered together outlines of human figures.

One of the ways Doff addresses the theme of humanity is by questioning the way society treats its least powerful members, and in a way, its own future – the children. Child soldiers, street children, children in slavery and refugee children appear as characters of his art pieces. The adults surrounding these children are not only the criminals and manipulators who lure them into the “informal” sector; but there are also the indifferent ones, the people who see what is going on but who do nothing to prevent the loss of childhood by such children.