United Souls back in Abidjan: art, memory and transmission at the heart of MASA

Back from Abidjan, I still feel the symbolic power of this trip. A return home, but also an important step for United Souls and ART Weapon, in a dynamic of creation, transmission, and anchoring in West Africa.

On the occasion of the 14th edition of the Abidjan Arts and Culture Market - MASA, ART Weapon supported the organization of THE MASK, a video mapping project conceived by director Madani Touré, alias Chane, a friend and active member of the association.

Presented at the Palais de la Culture Bernard Dadié, this project marked a first for MASA: a meeting between visual modernity, cultural memory, and tradition. A strong symbol in this place bearing the name of Bernard Dadié, father of Ivorian literature, whose writing already questioned, long before independence, the place of the black man between heritage, tradition, and modernity.

This artistic proposal was a success, hailed as an immersive and sensitive experience, at the crossroads of digital arts, memory, and identity.

United Souls at MASA: A meaningful return home

As two years ago, United Souls was also present at MASA.

For the brand, this renewed recognition by the Abidjan Arts and Culture Market represents much more than a simple commercial presence. It opens an important window on announced development in West Africa.

United Souls was born from a simple and profound desire: to circulate the faces and legacies of struggle figures in the public space. Wearing a United Souls t-shirt means carrying a memory, a history, a consciousness.

This return to Abidjan had an intimate, artistic, and political dimension for me. To come back to Côte d'Ivoire with United Souls was to place the brand in a natural continuity: that of a dialogue between diasporas, the African continent, past struggles, and future imaginaries.

ART Weapon: extending the artistic combat of United Souls

This trip was also an opportunity to recall the deep connection between United Souls and ART Weapon.

ART Weapon was created as an extension of the brand, to give a collective, cultural, and artistic dimension to the struggle championed by United Souls. Where the brand circulates figures of struggle through clothing, ART Weapon opens spaces for encounter, creation, and awareness.

The association defends a strong conviction: art can be a weapon of mass awareness. A poetic, political, sensitive weapon, capable of provoking dialogue, raising awareness, and creating connections.

Through exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops, conferences, and meetings, ART Weapon acts as a catalyst between artists, audiences, institutions, and territories. It highlights talents, encourages committed approaches, and builds bridges between memory, contemporary creation, and social transformation.

RESSOURCES: Boris Ndjantou at Galerie Amani

This stay in Abidjan was also marked by the opening of RESSOURCES, an exhibition by sculptor-researcher Boris Ndjantou, a close friend and active member of the ART Weapon association.

Presented at the Galerie Amani, the exhibition came to fruition thanks to the welcome of Ivorian gallerist Léon N’Guetta, who truly fell in love with Boris's works.

Léon is a long-time friend, almost an older brother from the neighborhood. I wanted to thank him warmly for his trust, his insight, and his commitment. By hosting Boris's work, he allowed this exhibition to find a just, sensitive, and profoundly coherent setting for its message.

RESSOURCES questions matter, memory, forms, and heritage. The work of Boris Ndjantou, between sculpture, research, and artistic gesture, is part of a deep reflection on identity, transculturality, and the invisible forces that shape our ways of inhabiting the world.

His work draws from his own journey, at the crossroads of several inheritances. It brings into dialogue the spirituality derived from Bamileke cosmogony and the rationality of Western cosmology. From this encounter arise tensions, but also fertile spaces for reflection, where cultures do not only oppose each other: they respond to each other, confront each other, and enrich each other.

Three main themes particularly run through his work. First, architecture, conceived as a mirror of the relationship between the individual and their environment. Then, the notion of danger, both material, symbolic, and spiritual, which varies according to cultures and belief systems. Finally, writing and language, seen as essential tools for inclusion, integration, and also transmission.

Through RESSOURCES, Boris Ndjantou gives shape to these questions. His sculptures become spaces of passage between intimate and collective memory, between raw matter and symbolic thought, between ancestral heritage and the contemporary world.

In this, his work fully resonates with the concerns of ART Weapon: how to create from what moves us, what precedes us, what constitutes us? How to make art a place of dialogue between cultures, memories, and imaginaries? How to transform matter into language, and the artistic gesture into an act of transmission?

Chane, Boris and United Souls: the same creative constellation

Killing three birds with one stone, the universe brought us together: Chane, Boris, and I, in my home country.

Three paths, three languages, but the same intuition: that art can create bridges. Between generations. Between territories. Between the visible and the invisible. Between wounded memories and imaginaries to be rebuilt.

Chane, with THE MASK, explored the power of video mapping as a contemporary language capable of reactivating symbols. Boris, with RESSOURCES, gave body to a sensitive research on matter and memory. United Souls, for its part, continues its journey by bringing faces of struggle into the public space.

These crossed presences in Abidjan speak to the common DNA of our projects: creating, transmitting, raising awareness.

United Souls now available in Abidjan and Grand-Bassam

This trip also marks a new concrete step for United Souls.

We are pleased to announce that United Souls creations will now be available in Côte d'Ivoire:

at the Galerie Amani, in Abidjan,
and at the Boutique Misoua, a concept store run by gallerist and friend Jean-Léon N’Guetta, in Grand-Bassam, France Quarter.

This establishment is an important first step in the brand's development in West Africa. It allows United Souls to connect with an African, Ivorian, diasporic public sensitive to issues of memory, culture, identity, and transmission.

A return, but above all a beginning

This stay in Abidjan was more than a business trip. It was a meaningful return.

A return to the homeland.
A return to the roots.
A return to a land of creation, memory, and possibilities.

Through MASA, THE MASK, the RESSOURCES exhibition, Galerie Amani, Boutique Misoua, and the presence of United Souls, something opened up.

A new chapter.

United Souls will continue to carry the faces of struggle. ART Weapon will continue to create spaces where art becomes consciousness, where memory becomes action, where creation becomes transmission.

Abidjan was not just a stop. It was a sign.