STEPHEN WALTER
STEPHEN WALTER
62.3 x 86cm
Archival Inkjet print Edition of 25
A special thanks to: Erik T Frank (ecologist, photographer and director of the Comoé Research Station); Camille Lavoix (journalist writer, and historian) and all those at the Comoé National Park.
Covering the entire area of the Comoé National Park and its surrounding towns and villages, this map is a celebration of the regions’ biodiversity and its vast expanses of tropical savannah. Here, cultural landmarks surround The Comoé, this ecological island, all 11,500 km2 of it.
At first it appears to be a regular map, but a closer look will reveal its contents showing the rivers, forests and ‘totem species’ that make Comoé a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The map is also a study into the Koulango people and others that inhabit the area to the south, and to some extent, the Lobi cultures to the east. Names and phrases in local dialects, English and French, merge with painted and drawn elements.
It has two insert maps. One of the Research Station itself and one of Kakpin, a town to the south of the park that collaborates with the station. It tracks the two previous locations of the town, its principle sites and sacred places.
This work was created at the Comoé Artist Residency, 2019 in collaboration with Erik T Frank (ecologist, photographer and director of the Research Station) and Camille Lavoix (journalist writer, and historian).
It uses Koulango language which up until recently has largely remained unwritten, passed on through aural culture and stories telling. Camille Lavoix is currently researching the linguistic history of the Koulango locals and forming deep ties in the community there.
The Comoé National Park is a Biosphere Reserve, UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest protected area in West Africa. It ranges from the humid Guinea savannah to the dry Sudanian zone, and is one of the most bio diverse savannahs in the world. The park that is now reemerging from the recent civil war.
Interestingly, the perimeter line faintly traces a region dominated by the Tsétsé fly in the wet season and their transference of sleeping sickness on to livestock. The Tsétsé fly reign is one of the main reasons why the park is here in the first place. The boarder is also a political line, and like its people, it has been a fluid one for years...
A special thanks to Camille Lavoix and Erik T Frank for their invitation and collaboration, also to the European funders that they represent at the Comoé Research Station; Macline Hien; Mamoudou Bolly, the OIPR (Park Ranger) and the local people.