Creating Humaliens Rickii Ly Ivorian Digital Artist

Eric Adé Tanauh ( Rickii Ly ), 27 years old, digital artist and art director in an advertising agency born and raised in Ivory Coast, Abidjan. His style of art fall within the genre of Afrofuturism, which he describes as a mixture of artistic movements like Cubism, abstract or Hyperrealism. His digital art is a way to represent Africa and African culture in other worlds, in space, in the digital realm while remaining traditional.

Rickii Ly’s artwork has his identity and signature. His explorations into Afrofuturism have a unique look that allows everyone to know, even though his name is not mentioned, that he created it. Rickii Ly describes his graphic art and collages to reveal the unseen beauty of his environment by exploring the unordinary.

My artistic vision was turned upside down when I discovered Afrofuturism in 2016. I loved it and I quickly immersed myself in this concept which for me is a cross-over between science fiction and African culture. I think the Black Panther movie illustrated that well.

As my artistic identity was transmitted in my works, my characters created themselves through very specific traits in a traditional, rustic, vintage and dark universe. It can be a bit too long, arms that go beyond the knees, a blank stare that says a lot or even elements from several worlds that only intersect in my mind. My Humalians (Half Human, Half Cosmos), a term coined by writer Rune Lazuli to define the physical and spiritual duality of human beings, are a much more evolved extension of our species, living on another galaxy almost near the our but undetectable by our technology. For several years, I have been documenting in images the daily life of their passage on planet earth.