One Picture Book Two #31 : Ça Va Aller.

Photography by Joana Choumali.

Nazraeli Press, USA, 2022. English, 16 pp.

“Delicate threads draw colourful lines, circles and rays. They fill empty spaces, color the sky, mark the outlines of the buildings and the streets of a town in state of suspension. Solitary and silent figures, wrapped in an embrace of filaments and colourful bubbles, appear at once isolated and protected by them.

The artist Joana Choumali intervenes on the photographs she took with her smartphone in Grand-Bassam (Ivory Coast) in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in 2016. Through the meditative act of embroidery, chosen as a way to process and overcome the pain she felt at the time, she gives life to a different kind of imagery.

A gesture that is as much powerful as it is symbolic: to mend what had been torn, to reconstruct beauty where only desolation appears to be left. Most importantly, to stop and take the time to contemplate and process the feelings, the emotional response to the situations life presents us with.

Taking the necessary time to overcome pain allowed her to tap into her inner reserves of creative strength. A transformative process able to generate new meanings, give hope and make beauty out of pain, just like the soft waves and coloured lines blossoming all over her images.” — from the Introduction by Maria Pia Bernardoni

We are delighted to announce the long-awaited publication of Ça Va Aller (“It Will Be Okay”) by Ivory Coast-based artist Joana Choumali. Choumali is the first African winner of the prestigious Prix Pictet, an annual honor for photography and sustainability, which she won for her series Ça Va Aller. The prize culminated in “Hope,” an international traveling exhibition spanning numerous venues, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo, the Mouravieff-Apostol House & Museum, Moscow, as well as venues in Zurich, Shanghai, Dublin, Monaco, and Milan (2019-22). Her work has also been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021-22); Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech (2019-20); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2019); and the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre (2017). In 2017, Choumali was included in the Côte d’Ivoire Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. She was named the 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University and was awarded residencies with Nirox Foundation, Johannesburg (2017) and the IFITRY Residency, Essaouira, Morocco (2016; 2015).

Ça Va Aller is limited to 500 numbered copies, each including a photograph printed on cotton canvas embellished with hand-stitching. Each artwork is unique.

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