In the series “Ça va aller,” photographer Joana Choumali adds embroidery to images captured of her African hometown, Abidjan, in the days after the March 2016 Grand-Bassam terrorist attack that took 19 lives and injured 33. She began embroidering as a way to cope, with the series evolving from this approach. The artist observed a melancholic population following the event.
“Most of the pictures show empty places, and people by themselves, walking in the streets or just standing, sitting alone, lost in their thoughts,” she says. “‘ça va aller’ means ‘it will be OK.’ This typical Ivorian expression is used for everything, even for situations that are not going to be OK. This work is a way to address the way ivorian people deal with psychological suffering.”
See more works from the series below.
