Ana Zulma

Ana Zulma aka Anne-Laure Gougne is a graduate of Beaux Arts de Lyon. Her artistic practice has developed around a multidisciplinary approach that gives substance to a protean and evolving work. From the early years of her career when Ana was still only Zulma, an imaginary double, a totalitarian and misanthropic creature, the artist retained a deep interest in the forms of self-reflection and world narratives. Exploring the genre of performance, Zulma's character was a pretext to exorcise buried ills by reinventing ways of saying oneself and one's context through the body's action in space. Zulma and Ana, two antitheses that now meet in the avatar of a storyteller artist. Her recent photographic works also borrow from the performative in their realization. Each work is constructed by following a series of rituals. Ana Zulma grabs photographs - her own, those of others - as one grabs a book and observes them carefully in search of the punctum of the image, that point of photography that crystallizes meaning and marks for her the beginning of her artistic interpretation/reinterpretation. Ana Zulma scrapes, pierces, sews, paints, alters the material in the idea of bringing out new readings: magnify the imperfect, favors chance over the obsession for perfection, and finally turns the memory towards the future. Because the artist's approach, often built around series that she enriches over time, responds to her deep desire for reconciliation. In this way, the artist explores the reverberation of opposites, bringing together reality and its ideal, the visible and the invisible, drawing on this in-between, the creative energy of new imaginaries. ...

Galerie Cecile Fakhoury opened its doors in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in September 2012. In May 2018, the gallery inaugurated its second space in Dakar, Senegal and a showroom in Paris, France. Shortly after, in March 2020, a new project space dedicated to emerging artists from Africa opened in Abidjan. In October 2021, Galerie Cecile Fakhoury inaugurated another gallery, opening in the 8th arrondissement of Paris on Avenue Matignon. The gallery promotes contemporary art from Africa and the Diaspora by providing visibility to the artistic diversity and creative spirit from the continent. Through its programming of solo and group exhibitions, participation in international art fairs, biennales, and collaboration with international galleries, Cecile Fakhoury is a leading force putting contemporary African art on the global map. The artists represented by the gallery are distinguished by their cultural identities and stories, they create a new language that crosses geographical boundaries and familiarities. They are observers of the world they live in, critics of society, and committed to their positions living within complex histories. In turn, they ask us to reconsider our own relation to the world. ...