Assoukrou Aké

Episode 3Assoukrou Aké
Series

Rituals and Creativity

In the rhythm of daily acts, creativity quietly takes shape. Artists show how repeated gestures, routines, and careful attention transform ordinary moments into meaningful practice. Through these rituals—whether in drawing, movement, or material exploration—art becomes a meditation, revealing how consistency, focus, and care shape both creative work and the evolving self.

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Episode 3 of 4

Assoukrou Aké

Working across installation, sculpture, engraving, and textile work, Assoukrou Aké approaches art making as a ritual encounter with memory. His practice unfolds through repeated gestures of marking, layering, and reconfiguring, allowing symbols to surface and return as personal and collective histories intertwine.

At the heart of this process lies a constellation of references - African mythologies, Enlightenment iconographies, sacred allegories, classical literature, and press photography. Within this layered terrain, recurring figures emerge like ritual signs: the spiral-faced silhouette that moves between anonymity and lineage, or the solemn horse that carries an epic weight. Even his carved wooden forms participate in this logic of repetition and transformation; the act of carving becomes a way of tracing what lies beneath the surface, revealing histories held quietly within the material.

Aligned with the spirit of Rituals and Creativity, Aké’s practice uses rhythm, translation, and return to revisit what has been fractured or obscured. His works become spaces where memory is neither resolved nor erased, but continually reshaped - offering glimpses of new solidarities and shared languages in formation.

Episode

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00:00

Béance éternelle
Car Dieu a tant aimé le monde
Chaîne de gestes
Car Dieu a tant aimé le monde
Au-delà, le cri

“ The characters that I bring to life in my work constitute, through fragments and through a kind of constellation, an archive of African consciousness that mixes the sacred and the profane to better reveal the essence of human life, that of a fragmented identity that needs to be reinvented. ”

 

- Assoukrou Aké

Featured Artist

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Pour un récit sauvage
Artist
Assoukrou Aké
B.1995, Ivorian

Assoukrou Aké is a multidisciplinary artist, who freely explores different plastic forms ranging from installation to sculpture, including engraving and textile works, to develop what he calls 'a healing story'. By confronting his personal history with 'the big story', Assoukrou is interested in what binds them together, attempting to take an empathetic and distanced look at the shadowy aspects of collective history, in order to overcome the singularities of each person to reach a mixed critical space where the fragments of individual lives could make sense again and create new solidarities. Assoukrou Aké's universe is made up of multiple references, interweaving African mythology and iconography from the Age of Enlightenment, sacred allegories, classic European literature, secular rites and press photography. It often embodies a tragic dimension, establishes an atmosphere of grandeur and evokes epics, great adventures, conquests – or their failure. Through the plastic repetition of traditional or classic forms and the subversion of contexts and hierarchies of material, Assoukrou Aké ultimately composes an art of translation, of transposition, in order to be able to confront the mutations of violence and invent a new common language, discoverer of the world and the answers that are intrinsic to it. ...

More Works By: Assoukrou Aké

Cendre de la transe
Empire d'imperfection
Épave vivante
Je suis une cage
Jusqu'au bout du ciel
L'éclosion d'une multitude
Le bruit des âmes
Assoukrou AkéLe bruit des âmes, 2021
107 x 114 x 11cm
Le cri qui m’habite
Lune de pluie
L’odalisque noire
Misère du temps
Perle noire
Assoukrou AkéPerle noire, 2022
153 x 107 x 4.5cm
Sad bird still sing
Sans Titre
Assoukrou AkéSans Titre, 2023
59.5 x 42cm
Sans titre
Assoukrou AkéSans titre, 2023
59.5 x 42cm
Sans titre
Assoukrou AkéSans titre, 2023
59.5 x 42cm
Sans titre
Assoukrou AkéSans titre, 2023
59.5 x 42cm
Sans titre
Assoukrou AkéSans titre, 2023
59.5 x 42cm
Sans titre #8
Transe
Assoukrou AkéTranse, 2023
54 x 74cm
Vers l'effacement #1
Vers l'effacement #2
Victims and victors
Émergence des cendres #1
Émergence des cendres #2
Douce blessure
Ombre solitaire
La honte noire
L’énigme du trône
Rituel de l’oubli
3248 et des poussières #3
3248 et des poussières #6
3248 et des poussières #2
3248 et des poussières #1
L'écho des vaincus
Renaissance
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Carmen Argote uses movement, drawing, and installation to explore memory, place, and the body, translating lived spaces and histories of labor and power into tactile, abstract gestures.

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