Introduction:
Mogadiscio Mon Amour by Paul Badié is about the collision of worlds. It is a series of about seventy paintings that show the artist’s vision of the events that transpired in Somalia in the early 1990's; the paintings also tell of the events that have shaped his whole being. The colliding worlds are both real and metaphorical. Each painting deals with the outer, external, sense perceived world; while showing the internal feelings and ideas and conflicts of the author of these paintings. On the one hand we see the plight of a starving people who have become the daily fair of the nightly news, on the other we see them watching their own plight on their own televisions. We see images of the ancient mob confronting the twentieth-century soldier who in a matter of hours can be flown home to watch his fellows confront this confusion of contradictions, on his own television, thousands of miles away. How does the child become an artist, or the child become a man, or the artist the man are questions answered on this Tour de Mind de Artist.
Michael Svehla (1994)