accueil

1.3

Jean LAUDE :
" OUTLINES FOR BIAZINE ENCYCLOPEDIA "
(page 65 to 68 of J.LAUDE' book)

"No living soul could begin to pretend to have the least respect for himself if, before, he doesn't respect the indentity and differences of his own fellow beings.

Throughout his travels Clément-Marie BIAZIN never ever strayed far from his original intentions when observing and questioning those who invited him momentarily into their lives : of placing as much importance on the hosts' everyday life styles as their beliefs.
Every detail he deemed significant, he expressed in his paintings. But, on no occasion, did he allow himself to pass the least judgement on those he observed.

In Tchad, he had remarked that, "the Sara people have always lived naked, since Ancient times right up to the present day and even during the colonial period" .
Thus, when painting two women chatting together and lifting the traditional wooden disk to their lips, he concluded, "God created all living things, so any judgement would be misplaced".
In Zaïre, he had learnt that the young virgins of Waguenia tribe were not supposed to change their clothes before their wedding day.

On the occasions that he felt like painting the African countryside, it was purely to try and capture a particular characteristic : thus, Ruanda, as a mountainous region, is signified by winding roads climbing into undulating hills, and entwining a handfull of labourers about their work. The village, in its turn, is represented by a wooden fence, surrounding a cluster of houses and a couple of women, busy grinding and seiving millet.
The scenery here is not the sole and principal message BIAZIN is trying to portray : it becames alive with the inhabitants and their working-life.

Clément-Marie BIAZIN was of Catholic religion, however he strongly believed that this was no excuse to scorn the mythologies of others around him. He neither denounced nor brought down diabolical practices, instead, he saw and respected them as pure traditions, with deeply-buried roots.
Myths that attracted his attention__ those of his own people, those of his hosts__ he painted in a soberly way, with few figures, privileging those who were the beginners of local civilizations.

He dedicated one of his paintings to "Koulé Gengué", hero and founder of hunting, at the time of the ancient Yakoma people.
Another painting talks about the Mythology of Oubangui. He pointed out, in the text, that originally, Christianity was unknown to the Mbaka people, but that they had their own God, "Mboka".
Right beside the picture of this God, one sees the spirit of the forest__ which BIAZIN claims to be "authentic". And, in the accompanying commentaries in the picture itself, the word "the truth" is often observed__ and indeed occasionally underlined__ when talking about traditions, customs or myths.

__________

To think that all this corpus of myths, legends, epics of poems, even fairytales, have become dispersed, or even worse, forgotten, et a time when white man has taken advantage of his advanced technology to impose his civization, his way of thinking, his scale of values.
And all this corpus, can in no way be reconstructed.
In Africa, a dying old man takes the equivalent of a library to his grave with him : not having been able (or having wanted) to transmit this wealth of knowledge to the younger generations who, more often than not, aren't worried in the least.
The art and sculpture of AFrica has practically disappeared, either by plunder, or by economic necessity ; the artists can no longer use their traditional models as a reference unless they visit the museums of Europe or North America.
Not only the African environment, the habitat and ways of life, the appreciation of time, have been transformed ; the fragile mechanisms which guaranteed the balance of life in collectivity, which secured exchanges between Man and the Universe, have found themselves irremediably unsettled ; ancient rituals have fallen into disuse and totally ignored by those who would have been the legitimate heirs.
These rituals, apparently of great wisdom, were also the most solid and the most efficient.
The so-called "possessive" dances and the rigorous apprentiship imposed upon those involved, proved to have powers of curing certain mental disorders or irrational behaviour ; strange phenomenons arose, closely associated to those not unknown to the Greeks under the name of "Catharsis" and who, thanks to the violent release of psychic tensions (expresed through a precise, practised code of gestures and different behaviours) managed to reinsert the individual into the ordered system of their social group.

__________

Of all these ancient practises, Clément-Marie BIAZIN never went into much detail or analysis ; the reason being, that his historical manuscripts were not destined for the inquisitive Occidental, but moreover, for the African people, who, through their pure memory for traditions, would leave what they had learnt to future generations.
In this way, there was little, or no need for endless explanations ; the images, accompanied by the scripts, were sufficient ; it was enough to draw attention to the contents of a tradition__ in other words to revive it__ instead of being lost.

For Clément-Marie BIAZIN, painting a Yakoma dance or writing about various traditions of African countries, was a way of instructing those who had only previously heard of such things from their elders.
Through images, he reignited past traditions, bringing them to back to life so that they would go on from generation to generation.
He was, in no way, metomorphising them but reconstructing them, giving them a sort of continuity.

BIAZIN searched to represent a universal respect for each other ; respect for each others' differences ; and it is exactly this diversity which creates Unity.
BIAZIN was not searching for reasons why people were different, but he welcomed all differences without criticism.