Portrait of author, essayist and activist Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
Design Indaba
Cape Town, South Africa
Equatoguinean author, essayist and activist Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel was selected by Design Indaba to take part in our collaborative initiative with Google Arts & Culture, titled Colours of Africa. Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them. The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.
- Title: Portrait of author, essayist and activist Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
- Original Source: Design Indaba
- What it Means to be African: Living in Africa and being an African is to be the custodian of an unknown knowledge - it would not be strange that we soon go to the African communities to learn something that we believe should be in them and that is essential for our survival as a community
- Subject: Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel
- Rationale: In the small African villages that are devoted to subsistence farming, if you lack the ability to be guided by colour in nature you would harvest your fruits because you would not recognise when they were ripe. So, if you know the colours, you will help nature to help you. It is a matter of survival. “Anyway, the more enterprising among us held that piece of bread in our hands and thought of salt and chillies. We carried the lamp, or whatever light was available, and groped around outside looking for chillies, tiny chillies that were red when ripe, green otherwise. Then we went back into the house and crushed them up with a bit of salt. As we did so, grandmother and our mothers would warn us about the heat, though sometimes they just left us to it.” - By Night The Mountain Burns, 2014.
- Project: Colors of Africa
- Location: Equatorial Guinea
- Lead Quote: If you lack the ability to be guided by colour in nature you would harvest your fruits because you would not recognise when they were ripe
- Hex Code: EA4B36
- Colour Choice: Capsicum
- Biography: Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is an author, essayist and activist from Equatorial Guinea. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including novels, plays, poetry, essays and film scripts, and has several unpublished manuscripts. Born in 1966, Ávila Laurel is the subject matter of the award-winning documentary The Writer From a Country Without Bookstores. For many years, Ávila Laurel opted to stay in Equatorial Guinea rather than live in exile, and was very vocal about his objections to the government. He has been a constant thorn in the side of his country's long-standing dictatorial government, engaging in protest and political activism. His first novel to be published in English, By Night the Mountain Burns (published by And Other Stories, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and is based on his time growing up on the island of Annobón. The Gurugu Pledge, his second novel to appear in English, was published by And Other Stories in 2017. Ávila Laurel made headlines in 2011 by embarking on an anti-government hunger strike, and now lives in exile in Barcelona, Spain. In 2003 he was appointed Joseph G. Astman Distinguished Faculty Lecturer at Hofstra University, New York. He has spoken at conferences in Korea, Switzerland, Spain and the United States.
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