For this year’s Outsider Art Fair, New York dealer, Norman Brosterman, will be showcasing a diverse group of the remarkable, architectural, and linguistically complex drawings by African, Self-Taught, artist, Bouddha Mabudi.
Bouddha Mapong Hope Bouddha was born into the Kuba tribe, on March 3, 1963, in Mweka, Democratic Republic of Congo. He lives in Kinshasa. His autobiography - L’INVENTION SUR LA CONSTRUCTION ALPHABETIQUE - chronicles his transition from hotel and food store manager to artist-inventor.
"Although I left the houses seen in dreams with my name MABUDI, I became a literacy artist. I transform letters into houses, monuments, acrostic poems, dictionary endings, artistic writing, houses in the shape of numbers... Indeed, building a house is an instinct that we see in nature, among birds (animals, tamping holes, earth pits, tree fronds, etc.) Quaternary man, to shelter himself from bad weather, would have to build a hut made of straw, thatch, branches, etc. Over time the hut became a house, a building, a building.
To make the difference from birds and animals who have remained at the same standard of instinct. Man invented the flying house (airplane), the sailing house (ship, boats), the rolling house (vehicle) and the static house. There are several styles of houses. Today we are talking about the alphabetical construction designed to the styles of the houses that are added to the Luca plan. Alphabetical construction is considered the second invention of Africa after the Egyptian pyramid.”
- Buddha Mabudi 2023
