Akim ZEROUALI
Black Souls
"It all started on a Sunday afternoon with the family sitting in the living room watching 'Roots,' the soap opera based on Alex Haley's book of the same name that follows the life of a slave family over three generations. The scene takes place in the holds of a Negrier. All the captives are chained and are plotting a mutiny. In order to communicate with each other, each one names his tribe. When one of them calls out the name of the Fulani, my mother, proud and astonished, tells us that her grandfather was a Fulani and that we are therefore part of this tribe. The attempted mutiny failed and all became slaves. That moment was engraved in my memory . I felt proud. Shortly afterwards, without really understanding why, I began to carve miniature totems out of my pencils on the school benches. It was not until many years later that I made the connection between Roots, the Fulani and my totems. While researching the art of the Fulani people, I discovered that they made polychrome bedposts in the form of non-figurative totem poles. When I saw them, it became obvious that my work was an ancestral legacy. An instinctive gesture that had always been in me. I now understand where this creative impulse originates from. Freeing the soul of the wood is ultimately an unconscious way of freeing the slaves imprisoned in the hold of this boat. A way to free my ancestors. The series "Black Soul" is a continuation of "Soul Of Wood". Soul of wood evokes the liberation of the Soul. Black Soul ties more precisely to the color of my ancestors.
Akim Zerouali