Armand Boua

"Armand Boua’s work powerfully reflects the resilience of urban life through layered compositions that merge painting, collage, and abstraction. Using tar, acrylic, newsprint, and recycled cardboard, he applies and strips away material to reveal ghostly silhouettes that evoke the lives of street children. In works like Chien Errant (2022), figures emerge and fade within textured, muted surfaces, transforming decay into beauty. Boua’s distinctive technique balances social critique with human tenderness, offering a poetic reflection on memory, marginalization, and the enduring strength of the human spirit."

MEET

Armand Boua

Armand Boua, born in Abidjan in 1978, is an Ivorian visual artist whose work powerfully reflects the lives of street children in his hometown. A graduate of the National School of Fine Arts of the Ivory Coast, he uses tar, acrylic, newsprint, and recycled materials—often on cardboard, symbolizing the fragile surfaces orphans sleep on—to create layered, textured portraits that expose the violence and social struggles of West Africa. Balancing raw execution with emotional depth, Boua’s paintings evoke both brutality and tenderness, capturing the resilience of his subjects. His work has been exhibited internationally in London, Dubai, New York, Stockholm, and Abidjan, and is held in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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