Kristine Tsala

Presentation

Kristine Tsala, born in Yaoundé (Cameroon), was a forest girl until she was 18, living in a village surrounded by tall trees. The vibration of art was inside her, this desire to represent things according to her sensitivity and vision. The characters she paints are her new trees. Her mother played an important role in her vocation by registering her for the entrance exam to the art training institute. She later went on to study at the Fine Arts School in Kinshasa. The street, her inexhaustible source of inspiration... These are the men and women the artist meets every day as she wanders... The streets of Douala with all their colors, horns, spices and smells... Painted in rich, vivid colors, her giraffe figures are slender, elegant with tapered necks...a scene where mystical signs and an infinite heritage of mask cultures intertwine. This artist proposes a split vision, that of the inner conflict between the visible and the invisible, that of the difficult time of social integration with the modern “traditional” duality. In love with loincloth, she integrates it into her compositions in subtle, aesthetic ways. Her working media range from canvas, wood and cardboard to animal realism, the semi-abstract of her giraffe figures and the abstract proper. The artist continues to dig deep into her work...