Bolingo y’a Darry

Bolingo ya Darry

Bolingo Ya Darry, a sublime and magnificent work in its own right, tells the story of an unconditional love, a love without end, of a being who has always shared our daily lives and experiences. From the moment we are born to the moment we mature, her presence is dear to us, and she never or almost never leaves us; the tone of her voice awakens us, and the warmth of her affection fills us with wonder.

Bolingo ya Darry, Darry’s love in French, beautifully and vividly expresses this correlation between two closely linked beings: mother and child.

Through this memorable creation, the artist plunges us into a universe of possibilities and indelible memories, leading us down a path that is sometimes dark and obscure, a path whose light he alone holds. The latter is the spirit that animates him at the time of his creation, and which endures throughout the exhibition of his work to the general public, as well as in his future journey.

Artists from different disciplines around the world have paid tribute to their loving mothers. From song to poetry, painting to sculpture, these different creators have sublimated this unconditional maternal love through their creations. Like lyric poets, they have made use of both matter and words to construct their poems of the soul in verse or prose.

Such is the case of the late famous Congolese singer Jules Presley Shungu aka Papa Wemba, with his mythical song “Maman”, penned by Pascal Phoba. Also the case of the famous Guinean writer Camara Laye with his generational work “À ma mère”, and more recently the French politician and journalist Clémentine Autain with her work “Dites-lui que je l’aime”. These are just a few of the many artistic heroes who, each in their own way, sing of a mother’s love.

In Bolingo ya Darry, a tribute to his living mother, the international Congolese artist Bul’s 21 opens up a breach in the world of artists who deal with this maternal subject, with this particularly contemporary ceramic.

This ceramic, 70 centimetres high and 35 centimetres wide, with a base of 30 centimetres, entirely in glazed terracotta, is a symbiosis of beauty and almost eternal memories that inhabit the mind of its creator, a cocktail of feelings and emotions, a blend of the most beautiful jewels of life ever received from anyone.

This work, in memory of her mother, is artistically worked as a representation of all the women of the world in general, and of Eastern DR Congo in particular, that part of the country at war for over three decades, where women are raped, massacred and killed.

On the day of the exhibition’s opening, the artist chose to wear a highly symbolic garment, both in terms of its value in relation to its place of origin, and its spiritual character.

The outfit is called “Mushanana”, a gift the artist received from a friend living in Goma, that part of the country targeted by enemies and the territory of various armed conflicts.

Through her choice of outfit, the artist has conveyed a message, that of supporting the women of the east of the country through her work and her heart.

We can clearly see in this work the depiction of a woman with two children, a girl and a boy. This is indeed the artist Bul’s 21 child, her twin sister, surrounded by the maternal love of Darry the mother.

An artistic and symbolic hole in the middle accentuates the beauty of the work, symbolizing the notion of infinity, the infinite suffering experienced by the mother in carrying two children in her womb.

These continuous representations of these three characters are palpable proof of all those moments of hardship endured by the mother, but also of all the memories of those moments of happiness and joy shared together to this day.

Brain21.