Portfolio
Selected Works
Upcycled industrial objects as cultural form
Ouagadougou · Atlanta · World
Multidisciplinary Artist & Designer · Burkina Faso
Working from Ouagadougou, Hamed Ouattara upcycles discarded oil drums into Afrofuturist sculptural furniture — forms that carry the geometric memory of Sudano-Sahelian architecture into the present. Each object is produced with a team of fifteen local artisans, bridging ancestral craft and contemporary art.
Institutional Collections
5+
Collections
20+
Years
15
Artisans
Friedman Benda
New York
Portfolio
Upcycled industrial objects as cultural form
Current Exhibition
Musée National du Burkina Faso · Ouagadougou · Until May 15, 2026
Learn more“What interests me is the relationship between material and memory. The oil drum comes from somewhere, carries history. I transform it into something that belongs to us — that speaks of Bobo-Dioulasso, of the architecture of our ancestors, of a future we are building together.
Biography
Hamed Ouattara (b. 1971, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) transforms discarded oil drums into sculptural furniture that bridges Afrofuturist aesthetics with the geometric vocabulary of Sudano-Sahelian architecture.
Working with a team of fifteen artisans in Ouagadougou, his pieces have entered the collections of the V&A Museum, Centre Pompidou, Vitra Design Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Denver Art Museum. He is represented internationally by Friedman Benda, New York.
Full Biography →Recognition
Museum Collection
London, UK
Museum Collection
Paris, France
Museum Collection
New York, USA
Gallery Representation
New York, USA
Exhibition Feature
Venice, Italy
Press Coverage
International
Museum Collection
Denver, USA
Design Collection
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Studio Journal