Le travail de l’artiste –

Wong, Lila Ann M.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/126441 Copy

Description

Title

Le travail de l’artiste –

Author(s)

Wong, Lila Ann M.

Contributor(s)

Traoré, Hamadou

Issue Date

2024

Keyword(s)

Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology

Abstract

Can an artist actually earn their keep? Do artists even work? These questions came up as constant points of debate in my ethnographic research on the political economy of cultural development in Burkina Faso. A couple days before Christmas in the majority-Muslim city of Bobo-Dioulasso, I realized something profound about the work many artists there do while helping Hamadou Traoré, a storyteller, pupetteer, and cultural administrator, on one of the many gigs he pieces together to make his living. Traoré had been hired, for a minimal sum, to MC a “Christmas tree” party at an orphanage and daycare sponsored by a foreign-owned cashew processing plant. The next morning he would tell some stories, dress up as Santa and hand out candies as requested. He decided though that the kids needed more—he needed to bring joy and wonder. So we spent four hours on the cement floor of the orphanage the night before, cutting out streamers and “JOYEUX NOËL” from scavenged cardboard and discarded documents, while fifty babies crawled around us grabbing for the paints and balloons. From nothing, from memory, from tradition, from invention, an artists renders joy in existence. It is social work; it is cultural work.

Description

• Hamadou Traoré, pictured, is a storyteller, pupetteer, and cultural administrator based in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. He is also a research consultant on my dissertation project and we collaborate together on a number of joint arts-research projects.
• If I receive any award for this competition the money will be put to the arts and cultural education project Hamadou Traoré and I co-organize at a public school in Bobo-Dioulasso, "Éducation Autour de la Culture."

Type of Resource

• text
• image

Language

eng

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