Muhammed Ali's admirer promotes his humanitarian ideals through art

Ali Bomaye simply means “Ali Kill Him!” And someone in Kigali has put together a one-month photo exhibition under that title. But more on the exhibition later. At the world-famous heavyweight boxing fight between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman in the then Zaire (now DR Congo), in 1974, the crowd was clearly pro-Muhammed Ali. They famously chanted “Ali boma ye” (the ‘boma’ for ‘kill’, and the ‘ye’ for ‘him’. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on January 17, 1942, Ali is widely considered the greatest heavyweight boxer in the history of the sport. He remains the only three-time lineal world heavyweight champion, having won the title in 1964, 1974, and 1978. Ali was loved as much for the skills he displayed in the boxing ring as for the values he stood for outside of the sport; a passionate crusader for racial justice and religious freedom. It is this magnitude of influence that a single man had on a hitherto little-understood sport, plus the social and political ideals he championed that Rwandan visual artiste Mucyo Mu is paying homage to in his one-month solo exhibition at the Innovation Village in Kacyiru. Some of the iconic paintings of heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali at the exhibition. The one-month exhibition opened on Friday evening and will run until January 4. It’s basically a graphic portrait of Ali –so you have small paintings with his face, interspersed with larger, iconic paintings when he is standing on top of an opponent, when he’s dodging a punch, in Mucyo’s own signature style. He uses bleach, obviously to give it that 1970s vintage aura. “It’s basically about the icon, the person,” Mucyo starts, when we meet for this interview at the Neo Café in Kacyiru. “In every sport you always have this individual that transcends the sport itself. They bring something different, and it’s like they’re bringing poetry in movement. It’s very sad in our society that we just wait for someone to pass before we can recognise them as true heroic figures of our era. But it’s too late because that person is gone. They are probably going to have a legacy that will be passed on to us, but I wanted to pay homage to this amazing human being when he’s still alive.” Mucyo shares a joke with guests on the opening night of the exhibition He hastens to add that the exhibition is not just about boxing, or Muhammed Ali the person. “It’s about the great humanitarian that he was, very much engaged politically, socially. He was simply awesome. So it’s not really an exhibition to sell paintings, but one to make people aware of the legacy of this iconic figure. ” “This guy brought beauty to a very brutal sport. It was beautiful to watch him fight because, beyond the usual brutal face-off with an opponents, this guy was dancing and sometimes making some clownish moves –then he had the words that he used to say. It could be said that he had the biggest mouth of his era, but he always walked the talk. If he said he would put you down in the fifth round, he would do just that.” Like any other sport, Mucyo contends, boxing is a life lesson, “a very important part of my life”. So important that, during his youthful days, he learnt Muay Thai boxing, a form of boxing from Thailand. “I did it at a point in my life when I really needed it because I was trying to put my life together,” he explains. “Boxing for me is not just a sport, it’s also a way of life –how hard life has to hit you, and when you fall to the ground when life is throwing you difficulties, are you going to wake up, are you going to continue getting up no matter what and continue to fight, or are you going to let things take you over?” Mucyo reveals that the idea for the exhibition first occurred to him ten years ago. An exhibition-goer decked out in Muhammad Ali garb. Mucyo’s mother beams with pride for his talented son. One day, while having coffee with his brother Gael Faye at a café in Europe, they noticed a huge mural of Muhammed Ali. “It basically stuck in my head and in his head too because he wrote something about it, while I had to let it sink slowly in my mind before I could do something on it.” ‘More than just a boxer’ “I don’t think you can easily find such iconic figures nowadays concerning a man, a sport, but also his legacy in social causes,” Mucyo says of the boxing legend. “He was a victim of racism and he went through so much during the early stages of his life. He went through so much trouble and difficulties in his life that he was basically bound to be defeated. But what he was doing in the ring, he was doing the same thing in life. He kept on fighting. He always fell down and got up. He lived at a time when racial tensions and racial segregation were at their peak in America.” It’s the social consciousness, Mucyo explains, that elevated Ali from just a boxer to an iconic figure –that of greatness and resilience: Knock Out! Mucyo and a friend try to relive the 1974 match. “Greatness lies on the brink of destruction. It’s almost when you think it’s over that you have to put in a little bit more effort to achieve greatness. Also, it’s with great pressure that we create diamonds. It’s pressures like that which create amazing human beings that can be very much role models to ourselves, to our societies, to our leaders … to everybody, because it speaks to the core of every human being. This guy is the embodiment of so many things. His words, his poems and his attitude toward adversity … his theatrical performance– because it was a performance, his engagement, his behaviour– everything about him screams ‘role model’.” To him, Ali carried such a huge weight of expectation on his shoulders from people loving him and counting on him and cheering him: “It’s not just another human being that he was fighting. He was fighting a system because at the time racism was at its peak. That’s what I love about Mohammed Ali the human being, not just the boxer. He was a champion not just as a boxer, but as a person.”

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Muhammed Ali's admirer promotes his humanitarian ideals through art