Later this month, The Paseo Arts District hosts its 48th annual arts festival, and artists from all over the world will gather to connect with each other and display their best works to the Oklahoma City public. Among the roughly 85 jury-selected artists, multidisciplinary visual artist and designer Hamed Ouattara’s work is sure to stand out. A Burkina Faso native with a base in Atlanta, Ouattara’s appearance at the festival will be his first visit to Oklahoma, and he hopes to bring a message of hope and resilience with his art.
“I hope the audience feels the power of transformation, the ability to create beauty from simplicity or forgotten materials,” Ouattara said.
Ouattara has always been drawn to creative endeavors, and since 2002, he has been making his art under the auspices of his studio, Studio Hamed Ouattara.
“Growing up surrounded by rich cultural traditions, I realized early that art would be my natural form of expression,” he said. “My inspiration comes from daily life, the tension between tradition and modernity and the deep spirituality of Africa. My main motivation is to share, through my work, a contemporary vision of Africa: inventive, vibrant and resilient.”
In addition to The Paseo Arts Festival, Ouattara’s work has been shown in collections at Brooklyn Museum and the Denver Art Museum, as well as exhibits in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. Internationally, his work has prominently featured in museums and galleries stretching from London, England, to Cape Town, South Africa. One of the aims of his art, from his paintings to furniture collections like Bolibana, is to help bridge a knowledge gap for anyone who may not know much about the history of states like Burkina Faso or the African continent writ large.
“I hope the audience feels the power of transformation, the ability to create beauty from simplicity or forgotten materials,” he said. “Through my work, I want to inspire reflection on resilience, hope and the potential to build something new from what already exists.”
According to Ouattara, a key hallmark of African continental culture is sustainability, and he contends that his work is a reflection of this as well as a critique of cultural practices in other parts of the world that treat things as more disposable.
“I choose to work with recycled materials because they carry a story,” he said. “Every sheet of metal, every barrel I use has a memory, a past. Recycling is both an artistic act and a civic responsibility for me. Sustainability is at the heart of my practice. It’s about giving new life to discarded materials, valuing local resources and raising awareness of our shared responsibility toward the environment.”
These themes are just some of what you’ll see in his work at the festival, and The Paseo Arts District is excited to show it off.
“Hamed’s work is just really vibrant and interesting,” said Amanda Bleakley, executive director of The Paseo Arts Association. “His canvases are very vibrant and colorful, and he’s got human silhouettes and symbols on them, which I think is really interesting. His work is unique from other artists that I’ve seen as well. So that’s why I thought it was really great to bring him.”
Paseo Arts Festival 10 a.m.-10 p.m. May 24-25, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. May 26
This article appears in Summer Guide 2025.