‘I love immersing myself in archives in order to find subjects. For me, it’s the most fascinating part of the creative process,’ says Carl-Édouard Keïta, speaking over a video call. During his years at Parsons School of Design in New York, the library made a lasting impression on him – its remarkable holdings opening up completely new horizons. ‘I had never had access to so many resources. It was overwhelming.’ He has carried with him ever since a boundless appetite for documentation. Extensive research precedes each of his series – including the one inspired by the history of the Goumbé associations in Abidjan during the post-independence years of the 1960s.

Our conversation takes place as Keïta is putting the finishing touches to a body of work in his New York studio that is destined for Art Basel Paris in October. Leaning against the studio wall, one canvas features a Black man lying on his back, arms folded above his head, his bare torso resting on a large, luminous circular field, beside him, a Senufo sculpture. ‘We always present solo shows to make the most of the visibility the fair offers artists who are still under the radar,’ explains his gallerist, Cécile Fakhoury. ‘It marks a turning point in their careers.’

Born in 1992 in Abidjan, Keïta grew up in the Ivory Coast. Drawing is for him ‘second nature’: ‘When I draw, I understand intuitively where the light comes from – my gestures are fluid.’ He subsequently taught himself to paint. ‘Every painting was a challenge,’ he admits. But he held a deep-seated conviction: ‘On canvas, you reach emotions that drawing simply cannot.’ Yet his compositions, with their muted tones, often allow the underlying lines that structure them to show through like watermarks – a testament to his love of architecture, kindled by a book his mother used to read. ‘As a child, then as a teenager, I would draw plans – for my future house, my school, my football stadium…’ Right angles, he freely admits, ‘still obsess’ him.

But his inclination towards art was at odds with his family’s expectations, and he enrolled in an economics and social sciences program instead. When he joined his elder sister in Atlanta, he discovered he could take an optional drawing class. The affirmation it gave him of his own ability enabled him to escape a master’s degree in finance. ‘My family eventually accepted that I could go to a design school, on one condition – that it be one of the best.’ He kept his promise and was admitted to the prestigious Parsons School of Design.

His graduation work earned him the prize for best draftsman of his year. For this graphite on paper series, he researched African performers in the Parisian cabarets of the 1920s; the sensuality of the dancers shines through the geometric lines that seem to constrain them. That same year, his first solo exhibition was organized at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury in Dakar, built around his graduation work and five new pieces. Titled ‘Le Bal Noir’, the emerging artist’s talent was plain for all to see. Les demoiselles or Whatever (2018) – a reinterpretation of Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece in which the influence of ‘primitive’ art shines through – was particularly striking in its audacity.

Keïta sometimes imagines himself as an ‘ambassador’ for Ivorian culture, which he considers little known even among Ivorians themselves. He has recently turned his attention to the phenomenon of religious separatism that led many to turn away from their ancestral beliefs and sculptural traditions. In the course of his research, the painter became aware of the connections between this neglected traditional statuary and the Dadaist imagination of the 1920s and 1940s. ‘Many works associated with that European art movement actually came from the Ivory Coast. For instance, I realized that the mask in Man Ray’s famous photograph Noire et Blanche (1926) was an Ivorian piece, from my father’s tribe.’ A revelation that now serves as the starting point for a new series.