The Messenger, M. Hervé (2017)
This painting with lively and violent signatures represents the crystallization of memories of war and a collective memory in reconstruction.
The painting.
To achieve such a painting, M. Hervé, the artist, uses an interesting process: drawing with a knife.
Once the canvas is finely cut and the forms of the future work fixed, it coats he canvas with oil.
Let's stop a moment on the treatment of the pictorial surface, scraped over several layers as to give the painting a depth aspect.
The meaning.
> The twilight
The choice of a scene that takes place at sunset constitutes the backdrop of the staging and has a strong evocative power. Because it allows the viewer to easily grasp the unrealistic aspect of the painting.
In a pictorial sense, the sunset, and therefore the imminent arrival of darkness, is here associated with the loss of hope, which will be seen later, is revived by the presence of the crowd.
> Dehumanization of the main character
The main character is a figure of a disturbing and threatening divinity from local religious cults. It emerges, threatening, in the midst of a crowd of women. The centrality of this figure highlights the problematic of the animality in man. This does not mean that man is fundamentally endowed with bad intentions but that anthropological pessimism is a reality in the Central African Republic. In a country where the law of the strongest rules, it leads man to behave as a monster and not to value the life of the other, in the name of an unlimited lust for wealth.
> The Women
Although visible, the faces of women barely appear to us. The "transparency" effect, which contrasts with the presence of ghostly silhouettes, testifies to the disappearance, the erase of the identity of these women.
The first victims of conflicts and wars have always been women. Disregarding their faces in this painting is a way of testifying how their existence is diminished during conflicts and wars.
> The crowd
The crowd needs to receive particular attention because it is the place where the presence of the other and the outside world is manifested. It should also be remembered that any progressive emancipation is born through group compositions.
Thus, by observing the posture of the group and the calm expression it transmits, a certain spark of hope springs from this crowd that instead of being a place where each other opposite comes together as to face the imminent danger.
> The bodies
The long and thin bodies are reminiscent of African sculptures
> Red
The captivating red is used here as the dominant color. What is interesting is the use of red, not black, as a color of darkness to accentuate the feeling of disturbing strangeness.
The allegorical dimension that this painting may assume is the image of a land made with fire and blood.
Art and life experience.
Like the writers, a work finds its meaning through the life of the painter as to allow the artist to reveal himself. Likewise, operating in the manner of a catharsis, the work frees the artist and the viewer from a traumatic past.
M. Hervé was born and has always lived in the Central African Republic. Like many of his compatriots, he experienced multiple armed conflicts and civil wars. I met him in front of a bakery trying hard to sell his creations and telling whoever wants to hear his different journeys.
His artistic approach aims to show how the extreme violence of wars, including the fact that certain armed groups attacked with machetes a part of the population, has irreversible consequences on human rights and the recognition of the freedom and right of the other to exist in its difference.
It is a personal way of giving his testimony and bringing his point of view to the various conflicts that the country has experienced.
Andrew Doyle wrote in an article in Spiked: "In our world full of dangers, museums are beacons of culture and optimism."
Particularly in a country like the Central African Republic ravaged by years of civil wars that have profited from the looting of museums, young artists are this optimism. An optimism where culture can be a powerful force in favor of peace and national reconciliation.