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Aissata Pinto Da Costa:
A Woman with Vision
By Linda A. Annan
As I walked into the brightly lit, inviting ambiance of Abby Z., a trendy plus-size store in Soho, New York, on the slightly breezy night of November 10, my searching eyes wandered around before landing on my target – paintings by Aissata Pinto Da Costa.
“Interesting”, I thought, as I fought back temptation to touch the paintings. My eyes darted to the entrance moments later to land on a tall woman. Pinto Da Costa’s gait, sure and steady struck me with the sense of confidence evident in her work.
As we walked over to our seats in one of the neighborhood’s famed chocolate shops, noises from the coffee machine could not deter the agenda of the night: my interview with a woman whose business in the arts fascinated me.
Provocative and audacious, her initial images treaded along a different line of female emancipation – displaying sexual images of a woman either demanding pleasure from her mate or in an intimate position. However, such messages have been replaced by more subtle ones, where the characters still maintain their sexuality but with an intention to engage in the act rather than the act itself.
But other images hit a different angle. Inspired by the curviness of the African and African-American woman, Pinto Da Costa creates images to embody them, in different shapes and sizes. Elements of her African heritage are evident in the paintings, especially in regard to color and adornments. The empowering overtones boldly and stylishly enhance the paintings.
This brilliant artist explains the root of the messages communicated in her work: “I was raised by a feminist mother and a feminist father, which is incredible for an African woman to have a feminist father. I didn’t realize I was drawing myself. You know, I’m an athletic person and I’m sure of myself. I have my insecurities as a woman but I’m sure of myself as a woman.”
A neophyte to the fine art industry, Pinto Da Costa, former model with Elite Paris and native of São Tomé and Principe, West Africa, chanced upon her artistic talent in Paris after a friend introduced her to the embroidery of Kuba cloths, a traditional design of the Kubas of Congo.
“I said, ‘If he can do that, I can do it too!’.” she recalls.
And yes, she did. Pinto Da Costa initially embroidered a simple Kuba design and then graduated to a larger size of 200 yards of linen, which she took to Mali with her friend to be enhanced by experts. The material later adorned her living space as a curtain; little did she know what it would inspire her to do.
“I was in my bed, you know how you look at the clouds and you see shapes. So I saw a shape and I said ‘Gosh!’, so I went to my computer and I started messing around and that’s how the characters were born.”
By characters, Pinto Da Costa refers to those that make up her vibrantly colored paintings. Usually in a group of four or five, these women are created with curves, a contrast with today’s mainstream body preference for the slim or thin and certainly with that of their creator’s lean, athletic physique.
Yet the quest to inspire others with her work overrides it all, because the answer to most, if not all, body image issues is acceptance of one’s self. “I want to use the characters to inspire young girls, especially,” she explains.
Last September, Pinto Da Costa was invited to address body image issues with 20 young girls by an organization in Baltimore.
“One was 16 and she had already had two children. I want these characters to become an educational purpose to show women that ‘you can do it.’ If I can do it, people can do it. I just think if I can do it, with work and focusing you can achieve amazing things.”
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