Trajectoires: Art Contemporain du Senegal.

Trajectoires: Art Contemporain du Senegal

Musee de I'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) Dakar, Senegal January 24 to March 9, 2007

The exhibition "Trajectoires: Art Contemporain du Senegal" encompassed more than 130 works by forty Senegalese artists selected from Dakar businessman Bassam Chaitou's private collection. Compared with other Dakar-based private and institutional collections, Chaitou began his project relatively recently, assembling more than two hundred works by Senegalese artists in the past ten years (see Grabski, forthcoming). Moreover, Chaitou's collection is unparalleled in its sheer number of works and its concerted focus on art by Senegalese visual practitioners. In building his collection and mounting this exhibition, Chaitou strove to create a comprehensive body of work reflecting the numerous trajectories and trends constituting Dakar's art scene from the 1960s to the present day.

The exhibitions main premise--that several trajectories of work animate Dakar's artistic terrain--was articulated by way of its thematic organization and the range of exhibited works. Most broadly, the exhibition was organized into three groups of artists based on their generation, a unit describing the period when they began to practice. The generations were further arranged into categories relating to inspiration, formal style, and conceptual premise. While the three generations and thematic categories orienting the exhibition are elaborated in the impressive companion catalogue, they were introduced in the exhibition with no more than a rubric. The lack of explanatory wall text was unfortunate considering Chaitou's objective of adding an interpretive layer to his collection's visual power. Each object was accompanied by a label detailing its exhibition history, an important addition given the number of well-exhibited chef-d'oeuvres presented.

Installed in the gallery of the Musee de l' Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN Museum), the only space in downtown Dakar commodious enough to accommodate the show, the exhibition was a sight to behold. Every aspect of the show was first-rate, from its installation on new wall panels and revamped lighting to the guided tours with the collector. The exhibition opened with nine paintings by pioneer artist Iba Ndiaye displayed directly across from the exhibitions main entrance on the gallery's second floor. The most spectacular was Ndiaye's celebrated oil on canvas Tabaski (1970), a work recently acquired by Chaitou which has long been the quest of many private and institutional collectors. Across from the section dedicated to Ndiaye's paintings was a group of works by Ndiaye's former students Bocar Pathe Diong, Mor Faye, and Souleymane Keita, who attended the Section Arts Plastiques at the Ecole des Arts du Senegal during his tenure from 1959 to 1967.

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The exhibitions next major section focused on the more numerous group of first generation artists: those associated with Pierre Lods' Section de Recherches Plastiques Negres. Featured artists included Amadou Ba, Ibou Diouf, Diatta Seck, Phillipe Sene, Katta Diallo, Amadou Seck, Ousmane Faye, Tamsir Gueye, Theodore Diouf, Boubacar Coulibaly, and Cherif Thiam. This section included some real gems, such as pen-and-ink drawings by Ibou Diouf dating to the early 1960s and a gouache on paper by Boubacar Coulibaly from 1975. Their presence further indicated the great labor and resources Chaitou has committed to research and acquisitions. In relation to the total exhibition, this category was the most inclusive and richly illustrated. The single noticeable omission was a tapestry or drawing by Papa Ibra Tall, who codirected the Section de Recherches Plastiques Negres from 1960 to 1965, and whose work is often considered a hallmark of the immediate post-independence era.

The next section featured Alpha Walid Diallo and Seni Awa Camara as autodidacts of the first generation. In contrast to the preceding section, Diallo's meticulous history paintings and Camara's fantastic terracotta sculptures made a relatively incongruous ensemble. Furthermore, this section suggested the fraught nature of curatorial constructs and categories. Specifically, one might question why Diallo was not included in the grouping of artists associated with the Section de Recherches Plastiques Negres since he attended the Section briefly. Diallo left to work independently because his paintings, based on the European genre of history painting, were not in line with other visual production at the school. At the same time, distinctions between the categories of autodidact and the Section de Recherches Plastiques Negres were called into question here. As is well-known, Lods's laissez-faire pedagogical philosophy was premised on art making without formal training. Finally, while Camara's sculptures figure into some prominent international collections, her terracottas seemed somewhat out of place because neither she nor her work really figure into the exhibitions and dialogues of Dakar's lively artistic community.

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The remainder of the second floor comprised the works of the second generation artists further organized into several subcategories. Especially elegant was the section "Mystical Writing;' which featured a subtle range of mixed media works by Viye Diba, Moussa Tine, Serigne Mbaye Camara, and Abdoulaye Ndoye, mostly from the previous decade. This particular body of work highlights a trend growing out of the 1990s where several artists infused their visual production with elements relating to text and religious practice. While some earlier works by Camara, Diba, and Tine were displayed, Ndoye's works dated exclusively to 2005. The inclusion of Ndoye's antecedent works, especially from his rice paper and henna series Painting without Paint at the West African Research Center in February 1999, might have provided a fuller sense of this particular trajectory.

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Several groupings within the second generation were devoted to a single artist. The subcategory of "Agit-Art" consisted of thirteen works by cross-media artist El Hadji Sy. Here the installation deviated from the expected paintings on the wall. Sy's captivating canvas and jute creations were hung on the walls in addition to being suspended from the ceiling and positioned on the floor. While the connection between Sy's work and "agitation" or shaking up art is obvious to those familiar with Dakar's art scene, the rubric conflates his individual practice with his role in the collective Laboratoire Agit Art. And, though the Laboratoire is better known for their performative strategies and philosophical platform than creating tangible objects, one might also ask about other artists associated with the group, most notably Issa Samb, who incidentally contributed his writing to the exhibition catalogue but did not factor into the show itself.

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The category "Master of Iron" showcased ten metal sculptures by Guibril Andre Diop. In contrast to the spatially focused categories typical of exhibition, visitors encountered Diop's sculptures in the museum's courtyard and throughout the gallery's two floors. The seeming ubiquity of Diop's work was, on one hand, a very fine illustration of the artist's versatility and skill. On the other hand, it accentuated the narrowness, and perhaps even paucity, of sculpture as a medium compared to painting in Dakar's art scene. Although the exhibition included sculptor Ousmane Sow, whose single large-scale work was displayed within the rubric "Search for Identity" the work by the late Moustapha Dime was conspicuously absent. While some might take issue with the amount of painting and two-dimensional mixed media art in the show, there is no doubt that the exhibition reflected accurately the primacy of two-dimensional work characterizing Dakar's art scene.

Displayed at an oblique angle from Fode Camara's commanding oil on canvas works (identified by the rubric "Pop Art") were thirteen highly decorative compositions by Kre, Seyni Mbaye, Zulu Mbaye, Amadou Sow, and Ibrahima Kebe (unified by the rubrics "Lyrical Abstraction" and "Naive Art"). In this section, more than anywhere else, the arrangement and selection of works drew attention to the wide disparity in technical sophistication and formal strategy among the exhibited artists. For those knowledgeable about Dakar's art scene, this grouping also sparked questions about the way works by informally trained and beaux arts trained artists seem to participate in the same exhibitions and collections. Glass painting or souverre is accorded attention in the show by way of six stunning works by Serigne Ndiaye, Sea Diallo, and Germaine Anta Gaye grouped together as "Renovateurs" artists who revised traditional forms of glass painting. Given the long history of glass painting in Dakar, one might have expected a slightly more comprehensive display and some reference to what these artists revised. Installed in a narrow first floor hallway behind the work of third generation artists, this arrangement was the only place visitors sensed the gallery's spatial limitations. On a related note, photography, a medium that, like glass painting, has an important historical and contemporary practice in Senegal, was not represented in the exhibition. This may surprise international viewers accustomed to the spotlight on African photography in recent collective shows in Europe and the United States.

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More modest in number, works by artists belonging to the third generation were displayed on the first floor. The bold graffiti canvases of Soly Cisse, Birame Ndiaye, and Douts Ndoye took center stage, filling the main room with color and energy. It is noteworthy that Douts Ndoye's seven-minute video Train Train Medina (2001, previously exhibited in "Africa Remix" at the Pompidou Center in 2005) was also included in this section. The particular grouping of these three artists was most robust compared to the two other trajectories represented, that of "Recuperation" (featuring Ndary Lo) and "Femina" (featuring Racky Diankha). While Ndary Lo is the best known locally and internationally of the recuperation artists, visual practitioners working with salvaged materials in Dakar are plentiful. Furthermore, as a practice and expressive form, recuperation cuts across the generations. For instance, the connection might have been elaborated between Los works and Guibril Andre Diop, who was among the first Dakar artists to work with salvaged materials, or several other second generation artists including Serigne Mbaye Camara and Viye Diba, who have employed salvaged materials in their work.

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In relation to group exhibitions of African art occurring outside the continent, or even the Dak'art Biennale, "Trajectoires" holds a special significance. It provided a compelling counterpoint to exhibitions where curatorial thematics dujour are imposed from without and the discourse around the exhibition overshadows the art. "Trajectoires" was an exhibition about art and artistic practice in Dakar intended primarily for the city's own art-going public. For Chaitou, both his collection and its exhibition represent a locally grounded initiative. The show was praised as such by artists, collectors, journalists, and the public. Because "Trajectoires" derived from Chaitou's private collection, it also catalyzed heated discussion about the government's role in collecting art and re-establishing a permanent institution dedicated to contemporary art. Many noted that "Trajectoires" was the type of cultural project that the government might have undertaken if it had the vision, commitment, and resources. And many wonder if the exhibition will nudge the government to commit to an institutional collection and permanent museum.

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"Trajectoires" succeeded brilliantly in representing the diverse threads of artistic practice and the wealth of creative practitioners comprising Dakar's thriving art scene. This monumental exhibition did much more than represent the best of Chaitou's collection and the best of Dakar's artists. It also proposed a canon and gave visible form to a history of Dakar's art world. At this moment when projects of collecting contemporary African art have been surrounded with controversy and debate, "Trajectoires" offered a breath of fresh air. Chaitou's commitment to collecting in Dakar is both inspiring and visionary. Even in Dakar's energetic art scene, this stellar exhibition and Chaitou's collection represent extraordinary propositions. They are invaluable contributions to projects of collecting and exhibiting contemporary art from Senegal in particular and Africa more generally.

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JOANNA GRABSKI is associate professor of art history at Denison University. She is currently working on a book manuscript dealing with contemporary art in Dakar. [e-mail]

My sincere gratitude to Bassam and Janan Chaitou for inviting me to review the exhibition and continue learning about their collection.

References cited

Grabski, Joanna. forthcoming. "Projects of Collecting and Exhibiting Senegalese Art: On Being a Mecene d'Art in Dakar," Presence Francophone, special issue ed. Helene Tissieres, Spring 2008.