ANTONI SOCÍAS + CARAMO FANTA

In this project, Antoni Socías (Inca, Mallorca, 1955) converts the African private universe on an artistic and feasible project to be shown publicly. Through a joint work with the Spanish-Gambian artist Caramo Fanta, a great example of personal achievement, Socías redefine the conventional view of Africa from strong and refreshing positions, moving away the recurrent image of the continent from the scenary of reflection.

“Twenty-two years since my first trip to Africa, and I hadn’t realised what I was on to. With no other aim than my own personal enjoyment and that of my family, for all those years I had stored up hundreds of good images and objects, too, until a series of concurring circumstances eventually forced me to make a fortunate decision. I would reconvert that whole intimate universe, turning it into a practicable artistic project. And I would exhibit it in public, not to conceitedly accredit the “adventures” I had lived through, but to clarify, through irrefutable evidence, that there are – at least artistically speaking – other possible Africas, regardless of the unhealthy egos and social rhetoric established around the subject.

(…) Not without certain doubts, after having weighed up the pros and cons, at the end of February 2010 I designed a strategy of accomplished facts for my second trip to Gambia, where I hoped to dot some i’s and cross some t’s. This, along with the fact that I already had a foothold there, thanks to my friendship with Caramo Fanta, a young Hispanic-Gambian artist, made my aspiration increasingly credible.

(…) A month after our last meeting, the project requirements meant that Caramo received a camera and a computer to process his new work. The result of our collaboration is a broad range of convened fictions, spiced with certain essences of disturbance, where the white respectfully tries to hollow out a place for himself in the black and the black in the white, at the same time: “Mi otro yo con algunas contradicciones” (My other self with some contradictions).

Antoni Socías

Activities connected to the exhibition

Production: Es Baluard Museu d'Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma.
Location-Hall: Hall -1.