Senegal, Madagaskar
Togo, Egypt, Tansania, Algerien
Togo, 1992
The African music, particularly the rhythm, seizes me completely. Hear much rhythmically chanted singing, drum sessions but also polyphonic song. Is the land, the earth around me, not as furrowed as this music? The wish develops to work on my earth-pictures with sticks and branches. In rhythm to the music, I whip and scratch at the pictures, paint with my hands, sit in the middle of the picture, then move around the picture, dancing.
Full moon, September: Pedakondji. Paint by pale moonlight nearthe dried-out, swampy river. In the distance, voodoo drums. On the following morning I paint on the back of my night picture - the "dayside".
Ulrike Arnold
