In Love With a Young Woman

This drawing by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, dated March 24, 1988, belongs to his ongoing project of constructing a visual and textual encyclopedia of human experience, in which mythology, intimacy, and symbolic knowledge converge. The handwritten inscription frames the scene as a narrative of desire and union—“in love with a young woman”—situating the image within Bouabré’s unique blend of storytelling and conceptual system-building. At the center, a female figure is rendered frontally, her body stylized yet assertive, while below her an inverted male figure establishes a striking compositional tension. This duality—upright and inverted, feminine and masculine—creates a symbolic structure that evokes not only physical intimacy but also a broader cosmological balance, a recurring concern in Bouabré’s work.

The composition is anchored by a band of geometric, hut-like forms along the upper register, suggesting both a communal setting and a patterned order that frames the human encounter. As in many of Bouabré’s drawings, the use of colored pencil and ink on a repurposed printed sheet underscores his material pragmatism while reinforcing the conceptual layering of the work: contemporary fragments of the world become the support for timeless narratives. The explicit yet schematic rendering of the bodies resists eroticism in a conventional sense, instead transforming the act into a symbolic diagram of connection, fertility, and reciprocity. In this way, the drawing transcends its immediate subject, becoming part of Bouabré’s larger vision—an attempt to map the emotional, spiritual, and social dimensions of humanity through a personal and universal language.

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In Love with a Young Woman, 1 original drawings, 63 x 32 cm, hand signed by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, 1988

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