Aida Touré

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Aida Touré is a Gabonese artist, Sufi poet, and a painter.^[1]

[edit] Biography

Touré was born in Gabon to a Malian Muslim father and a Gabonese mother. She later attended high school in France where she generated a distinct interest across the arts.

In 1995, she moved to New York to study music. During this creative journey, she felt pulled toward the practice of her native religion Islam which was to have a profound impact on the nature of her creations. Sufism, the inner dimension of Islam inspired her to produce poetic works of a spiritual nature.

She released her first collection of Sufi poetry entitled Unmanifest Poems in 2000 and in 2001 she published The Sublime Sphere. This was followed up in 2003 by another collection of poems called Nocturnal Light.

In 2005, while she was reflecting over one of her poems' Touré has professed to be overcome with images of ineffable beauty. This prompted her to take up painting to convert the spirituality in her poems into a visual landscape of beauty. She has referred to this art work as "Visual Sufi Poetry".

Aida Touré exhibited her art work in many of the major cities throughout the United States and also back in her native Gabon. She was featured in a textbook that has been published in the US and Canada. She has often appeared in magazine columns in Gabon.

The majority of her paintings are owned privately, mainly in the US, France, Gabon, and Mali.