Salimata Diop, Contemporary art Curator, Dakar and La Rochelle
Hamedine Kane, Artist and film director, Brussels, Paris and Dakar
Moderator: Simon Njami, Writer and curator, Paris
From Léopold Sédar Senghor, a theorist of the Négritude movement and Senegal’s first president, who encouraged the emergence of cultural avant-gardes, to the ebullience fostered by institutions such as Raw Material Company and the Dakar Biennale, the Senegalese capital is one of West Africa’s artistic cradles. Addressing institutional experimentation, avant-garde cinema, and contemporary art scenes, this discussion looks at the forces and questions that run through the city and this region of Africa.
Salimata Diop is a curator, art critic, and composer. She has been instrumental in promoting, documenting, and curating the creations of contemporary artists from Africa and the diaspora since 2012. She is the co-director of the documentary series ‘African Masters’, produced by The Africa Channel. She was head of programming of The Africa Centre in London, before being appointed artistic director of the Also Known as Africa contemporary art fair in Paris. She co-founded the Musée de la Photographie de Saint-Louis in Senegal and has curated numerous exhibitions around the world, including the Art Africa Fair (2017) in Cape Town, and the exibitions La Villa Rouge (2018) and Les Chants invincibles (2022) in Dakar. Diop is the artistic director of the 2024 Dakar Biennale, curated around the theme of ‘The Wake’, for which she has composed an album of the same name, as part of her innovative critical and musical curatorial work.
Hamedine Kane is a Senegalese-Mauritanian artist and film director. His artistic practice explores the notions of exile, wandering, inheritance, and the awareness that stems from the post-independence political experiences of some African countries. He also investigates the influence of African, African-American, and Afro-diasporic literature on political, social, and environmental activism, using film, photography, performance, and installations. Co-founder of L’École des Mutants, he focuses on the transmission of post-colonial knowledge.
Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic, and novelist. In 1991, Njami co-founded Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African art, where he served as editor in chief from 1991 to 2000. He was artistic director of the first Johannesburg art fair in 2008; the Bamako Photography Biennale from 1998 to 2006; and the Dakar Biennale in 2016 and 2018. In 2007, he co-curated the first African pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Njami was a member of and spokesperson for the Finding Committee of Documenta 16. He has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including the Ivory Coast pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. In 1998, he created Pan-African photography masterclasses with the Goethe-Institut, which he directed for 12 years. He has published and edited numerous books including biographies of James Baldwin (1991) and Leopold Sédar Senghor (2007), and four novels. His latest novel, The Mechanic of Memories, will be published in September.
The Art Basel Paris 2024 Conversations program is curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou.
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