J A Graham

I was delighted this week to learn that 45 year old Ivorian artist, Joana Choumali has become the first African photographer to scoop the Prix Pictet prize, winning with a series of embroidered photographs responding to the trauma of terrorist attacks in Ivory Coast in 2016. The series is entitled ‘Ca va aller‘ – meaning – ‘it will be ok‘, a reference to stoical reaction to adversity that she said permeated Ivorian culture. Her images were printed onto canvas and then later embroidered with stitches directly onto the surface. Combining photographic imagery with fabric and therefore, creating ‘conceptual portraits‘. She created this work ‘as a need to process the pain‘. She said ‘each stitch was a way to recover, to lay down the emotions, the loneliness and mixed feelings I felt‘. Her work is stunning but what particularly interested me was the way it helped her to process her inner pain. I believe pain is the root to many artists’ work, whether that be pictorial, sculpture or the written word and I refuse to believe anyone who tells me, and they frequently do, that it has no place – it has every place. I am luckily enough to be invited to many exhibitions and shows around the world and earlier this year, I attended the opening of Tracey Emin’s brutal portraits of female pain exhibition ‘a fortnight of tears‘. I spoke with her and discussed her work. Her background repeats in much of her art and as she gets older, also the sleeplessness, exhaustion, whirling anxieties and the fear of running out of time contribute. The power of female art has become vital for women and not ‘just‘ artists but for all women. French writer and poet Andre Breton once described Frida Kahlo’s art as a ‘ribbon around a bomb‘, I say, standby for the blast…

I hope you all love this weeks mobile photography and art showcase as much as I do. Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to our showcase this week. If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and Art Flickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. You can also submit images to our Instagram tag for this section #theappwhisperer.

Chhororo, klimtt – Cecilia Sao Thiago, Jun Yamaguchi, Sebastian Burczyk, Clint Cline, woltarise, borisbschulz2009, Catha Li, Catherine Caddigan, Deborah McMillion, Lorenka Campos, Sherrianne100, Hanni K, Southfield Photos, Laila, Rita Colantonio, I-C-Things – David Starling, Gianluca Ricoveri, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Rennie, p.a.hamel, Jane Schultz, Marguerite Khoury, Vadim Demjianov, psychephoto – Robin Cohen, kathyc2136, Eliza Badoiu, Anca Balaj, J A Graham, @filizakart – Filiz Ak, @schwitter.li, @pause.and.breathe – Susan Latty, mitrydate, Rosalie Heller, Diane Neubauer, Judy Wahlberg.

Music this week ‘You mean the world to me’ – Freya Ridings