ellipse art projects is an initiative launched by Ellipse Projects, a French infrastructure, design and construction company which operates in sub- Saharan Africa and Asia. The endowment fund launched the ellipse Prize in 2021, a travelling competition of contemporary art, whose objective is to promote the mobility of artists so that they can share their work and address specific topics each year. 

For its second edition, ellipse art projects decided to organise a competition for emerging artists living in Ivory Coast. 

Assoukrou Aké, winner of the 2022 ellipse Prize will be awarded a solo exhibition at AKAA. You will also be able to learn more about his work as well as the work of the four finalists of the Prize in the next edition of the AKAA Art Book. 

Assoukrou René Poupoint was born in 1995 in Bonoua, Ivory Coast. After studying art in Abidjan, he pursued his studies in France in art history and archaeology to then reorient towards visual arts at the superior school of art and design in Tours, where he graduated in 2021. By placing himself in the shoes of a research doctor, Assoukrou Aké elaborates narratives that he calls “healings” through his multidisciplinary artistic practice of collage, painting, engraving and sculpture. His research nurtures an art of translation for which he attempts to transcend an equivocal visual aspect of violence and its capacity for mutation. In order to deal with this unspeakable concept, almost impossible to represent as such, he constructs and deconstructs fragments of images by working with the material that he digs, cuts or tears to empty it of its meaning. His compositions with sinuous lines that echo numerous references ranging from African tales to engravings by masters such as Poussin or Rubens, or Dante’s Divine Comedy illustrated by Gustave Doré. Influenced by symbolism and spirituality, his work invites us to question the meaning of existence through these dark and heavy atmospheres from which emerges a touch of serenity and hope.