Oumar Ball

Until the age of 13 Oumar Ball shared life with his grandmother. When she passed away he joined his parents in Nouakchott (Mauritania). At a young age he was drawn to painting, through the work of his father, a photographer and painter. He explored sculpture, then changed mediums to painting, and back again. His first exhibition was realized in the French Cultural centre of Nouakchott.
Ball is a self-made Mauritanian artist, who explores different techniques, from his paper sketch books to his metal sculptures and immersive installations made of intimate observations and feelings. His art explores the past (his childhood) and the present (through encounters and travels). He creates abstract universes made of freedom of gestures, combined with the weight of materials such as rusted iron, recuperated objects, pigments, and earth. Ball is questioning the links between humans and animals as a philosophical search to answer one question: why existence? His explorations have led him to the ordinary poetry of simple objects which he attempts to convey in each movement, each line, each colour.