Aboudia was born in 1983 in Abendourou, at 200km from Abidjan, and discovered art-which he describes as "This little thing in me, a place for drawing"-at school. After winning a competition called Draw Me Your Dream, he left home, aged 15, to study at the Centre Technique des Arts Appliqués in Bingerville, sleeping in the classroom when the other students had left for the night. He graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Abidjan in 2005.
Aboudia, sees himself as a chronicler of the streets of his city of Abidjan, and, especially, the scores of disadvantaged children who populate them. In his large-scale, vibrant mixed-media paintings and drawings, which recall those of Jean-Michel Basquiat, he draws from the aesthetics of graffiti and traditional African carvings to depict the youth he engages with regularly in the city's toughest neighborhoods, and, more recently, the violent post-election conflict that ravaged Abidjan in 2011. "My work is similar to that of a journalist writing an article: I was simply describing a situation, in order to create a record of my country's recent history," claims Aboudia "I'm an ambassador of the children-they do writings on the walls, their wishes, their fears, I'm doing the same on my canvas. I'm like a megaphone for these children."
Aboudia is currently one of the biggest names in Contemporary African Art.
Artworks of Aboudia for sale at Robinsons Art Galllery