ON ART WITHIN THE CITY
By Dr. El Hadji Malick Ndiaye , Researcher and Artistic Director of the Dakar Biennial
Written in conjuction with the exhibition You Are Beautiful The Way You Are
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the instant connectedness of our worlds. The horizontality of our relations in the context of urgency has placed us all in an equally-lived timeline. The main effect induced on our cognition is the strong feeling that there are still natural winds of change surrounding ideological transformations. These are moments when states seem vulnerable, when economic and military disparities blur amidst the relentless surprises of the living. Such moments flatten the relations of domination and introduce a psychological rebalancing in which the main assumption rests on the fact that our condition is simply the counterpart to our choices. The crisis destabilizes our beliefs, disturbs our certainties, sparks an unprecedented artistic and intellectual stimulation and places us within a new register of relationships among individuals.
This has led to the cancelation of the Dakar Biennial, a great meeting displaying the state of the creativity of Africans and the African diaspora. Although the art world suffered the loss of a space for visibility and expression due to the state of several current events, it has not been fully muzzled by the pandemic. It is precisely to offer an alternative to these spaces of visibility that the exhibition You Are Beautiful The Way You Are has been imagined by Modou Dieng and Djibril Damé to re-enchant the walls of Dakar.
The artists presented here work in the fields of painting, photography, installation, performance and assemblage… They invite us to be ourselves without limitations, to get to know ourselves, to trust our potential. It is a lesson in self-love, a hymn for positive consciousness. Staying true to oneself is a beautiful way to enrich each other. For this, our contemporary heritage, a work of the soul and gift from oneself, is also the biggest gift of our whole humanity. These artists kindle reflection about our cities and towns, our architecture and our environment. They awaken doubt about the ideas that govern us. They offer the possibility of reviewing the historical narrative defining the principles of Négritude that were the pedestal of affirmation for black men. The concept of Négritude in the 21st century brought by the exhibition is also the doubt of a world that broadcasts the failure of the elites. It was therefore important that this message tears up the walls of Dakar, which then becomes an outdoor canvas.
The city of Dakar is an organic tissue, a body mutilated by architecture in all directions, an urban wound full of hope that must be re-enchanted by creativity, the foundation of intelligence, and the collective memory.You Are Beautiful The Way You Are makes this possible through education thanks to the direct access to the public and remote dialogue. Within the economy of this territory, this project expands the notion of the cultural consumer in which we are used to envisioning exclusively the public who goes to places specifically designated for art. The aesthetic enjoyment, democratized in an urban scale, changes the locations of visit and enriches the principles of interpretation.You Are Beautiful The Way You Are is an urban scenery that proposes new ways to exhibit art and leave behind the white cube. Furthermore, it allows us to better appreciate the buildings and streets that witnessed several years of history and memory.
On the seemingly disorderly architecture landscape, the works of art in the capital are open windows, boulevards of life, an encyclopedia where the stares of passersby clash. The relations between individuals and the environment receive here a contribution adapted to the context. May the city become a space of permanent exhibition.