A Remembrance of Helen and Newton Harrison

May the souls of Helen and Newton Harrison rest in peace. The seeds planted by them in the endless fields of Art and Nature will surely grow and enlighten the path of future generations of artists and human beings. More than fifteen years have passed since the Groundworks project, so my memory of the meeting is starting to be not fully reliable, but I remember Helen and Newton as decent and humble people, full of presence and refined human quality. I am sure about that. Anyway the cure problematic of their work puts us in the position of asking ourselves the right question, and of recognizing the powerful intelligence of Nature which has been intriguingly dealing with Time, Space and Aesthetics in a very balanced way since the so-called “Big Bang”. From our region of the world, one could track the traces of this honorable interaction between mankind and Nature since  “La Charte du Mandé” of the Mandiga Empire around 1235. We belong to Nature; that’s something that capitalism has been tragically trying hard to make us forget.

Kan-si and Newton Harrison at the Groundworks exhibition opening, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. (October 15, 2005). Photograph by Grant Kester.

Amadou Kane Si was born in Senegal in 1961 He graduated from the National School of Arts in Dakar in 1991. A multidimensional artist who expresses himself through painting, engraving, installation, alternative mosaic, photography, poetry and video. He was on the steering committee of several associations and was president and founding member of “Man-Keneen-Ki”, an association of artists working to save street children in Dakar. He is a founding member and coordinator of the artist collective “Huit Facettes-Interaction” with which he participated in Documenta 11 in 2002.