Must-see art from Senegal's Biennale: Sculptures of sugar, paintings of old postcards
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Loading... - Mamadou Ndiaye
- 05 Apr 2023
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The large paintings are based on old French postcards depicting life in Senegal. They're displayed in a replica of the courtyard of a traditional Senegalese home. It's part of a re-creation of Senegal's past from Senegalese artist Alioune Diagne, pictured above inside his Biennale exhibition at the Grand Théâtre National in Dakar.
Carmen Abd Ali for NPR
Outside, the afternoon heat has given way to the cool evening air. Bats swirl among the towering palm and baobab trees on the lawn of the Douta Seck cultural center in the bustling Medina neighborhood, just north of downtown Dakar. Inside, in the exhibition rooms, it's humans flitting about, waltzing from one piece of art to the next – lingering at a painting here, a tapestry there.
They're here for the Dakar Biennale, West Africa's top contemporary international arts festival, which takes over the Senegalese capital every two years. Concerts, gallery openings, lectures, dance performances, and films are premiering across the city almost every day, from mid-May to mid-June.
You might think of sugar as merely a sweetener. Congolese artist Hilary Balu turns it into art. His sculpture shown above depicts tombs of the kings of Congo and is called "Kongo, Banza." Balu uses sugar to reference the past enslavement of Africans to work on sugar plantations. He won't reveal how he turns sugar into art!
Carmen Abd Ali for NPR.
Your sculptures are made out of ... what?
Upon reaching the beige sculptures of Hilary Balu, patron after patron at the center pauses to ponder the intricate, ancient-looking works of art – a replica of a sword and a helmet, sculptures of a lion and a monkey – all carved out of ... out of what, exactly? "What's it made out of?" multiple people wonder aloud. "Sucre!" interjects Balu, who's mingling with the crowd. Read More…
