Tag Archives: Senegal

KESHA BRUCE’s “Sacred Liberation” at Waaw Residency, Saint-Louis, Senegal

18 May

Enjoy these photos of KESHA BRUCE’s opening reception for “Sacred Liberation” during her Waaw Residency in Senegal in May 2018. Among many new sources of inspiration, Kesha’s fascination with the baobab tree became magically obsessive. The artist describes:

The Baobab is the national tree of Senegal. I’d never heard of it until @kasiazudou sent me a picture of one that’s been carbon dated to be more than 6000 years old. I saw my first Baobab on my drive to Saint-Louis. They are absolutely eerie and otherworldly. I later found out they’re both feared and venerated for their magical abilities. I’ve been obsessed ever since.
Almost every tribe has a legend about the Baobab. In ancient times elders and community leaders would hold meetings under the baobabs so that the ancestors and spirits who live in the Baobab would guide them to make wise decisions.
And until recently, Griots, living historians who are keepers of historical records across generations, were buried inside Baobab trees.”

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY filmed for Damel Dieng’s The One Art Project

4 Feb

one art project logo

 

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY filmed for Damel Dieng’s The One Art Project. The One Art Project explores the meaning of art through a collection of video portraits of artists from around the world.

 

THE ONE ART PROJECT
“The thing itself is one, the images are many. What leads to a perceptive understanding of the thing is not the focus on one image but the viewing of many images together.” Rudolf Steiner

What is art? How is it so universal, and yet interpreted so differently by artists around the world? Why is it so important to all cultures around the world? Who are artists and why do they create? Who better than artists themselves to answer these fundamental questions? The One Art Project explores the meaning of art through a collection of video portraits of artists from around the world. By seeking artists’ profiles that are as diverse as possible across nationalities, cultural backgrounds and mediums, the project is also an exploration of humanity’s diversity through art. The goal of the project is to create a collection of at least a hundred portraits of artists from around the world. I hope this project contributes to a better understanding of art and what drives artists to embark on their creative endeavors. I hope it promotes art and motivates people to learn more about artists and their work. I hope it inspires artists and aspiring artists of all ages. I hope it also promotes the importance of learning from our differences and sheds light on the beauty and importance of diversity.

Damel Dieng Creator & Producer of The One Art Project

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Lucien Dieng aka Damel is an artist photographer and filmmaker based in Washington D.C. He started his career in visual arts in Dakar, Senegal in 2001 as a computer graphist in the first cartoon studio in West Africa. He worked for local tv stations, video production studios and as a freelancer in video editing, motion graphics, 2D and 3D animation and directing on a variety of projects. In 2007 he co-founded a local production company with a friend, which they ran successfully until 2011, when Damel moved to the US. In parallel Damel’s passion for photography grew steadily from his first shots in 2003 to his first exhibition  in 2010 during the Dakar Art Biennial in Senegal. Art has always been a passion for him. His self-taught background encouraged him into insightful conversations with artists and visual craft professionals. Such exchanges and his passion for filmmaking and storytelling ultimately led to the creation of The One Art Project.

DAK’ART Biennale opens May 9th, 2014 in Dakar, Senegal

7 May

dak'art 2014 logo

 

The International Exhibition of African and African diaspora artists is the main event of the Biennale. The selection is entrusted to the curators of Dak’art 2014: Elise Atangana for selecting the diaspora, Abdelkader Damani for North Africa and Smooth Ugochukwu Nzewi for sub-Saharan Africa. The selection is the combined result of artists invited by the curators, eight for each curator, and artists selected on the basis of portfolios provided by the artists or their representatives.

At this international exhibition are added four other events: an exhibition of guest artists dedicated to cultural diversity, the exhibition of African sculpture, Tributes exhibitions and Dak’Art into the Campus.

“Producing the common”

” All over the world biennial exhibitions multiply with the aim of creating a global image. Some might see it as a clear manifestation of globalization, a most exasperated expression, and a repetition of contemporary art exhibitions in a never-ending quest for novelty. For others, including us, the multitude of art biennials is an attempt to find “globality” and a common desire to produce a feeling of a singular world (Tout-Monde) in each place, a term coined by Édouard Glissant. What Glissant calls the “Whole-World,” is “our universe that is ever changing yet remains the same, and the vision that we have of it.” 
“Producing the common” is our central theme for Dak’Art 2014. With this theme, we seek to link politics and aesthetics in a vigorous and engaged way. Is the encounter of works of art in a specific place, the art exhibition, not an attempt to instantly produce the public space which people seek through movement and protests?
Most contemporary artists see politics as the prism through which they receive and interpret existential reality. They engage reality in their works and consequently involve their work in reality. Aesthetics is shaped by a wealth of forms and approaches used by artists to make their work legible. Thus, if politics is a way of communicating in the public space, is art therefore the base?
Art, more than any other domain, creates a chain of relations between men and women, but also the interplay between humanity, nature and the Universe. Artists’ creations must possess the vital force in order to command the attention of audiences. Art should be able to take into account common aspirations, fears, hopes and daily struggles with the utmost sincerity. That is why we think of the exhibition as the “distribution of the sensible,” to draw from Jacques Rancière. It is why we share his point of view of linking politics to art and aesthetics.
Our framework, “to produce the common”, is a conscious act of engaging what is collectively shared, and to take into account what affects everyone, the “Whole-World”. For Dak’Art 2014, we are interested in new modes of address used by contemporary artists (from Africa and elsewhere) in thinking critically about art and the artistic process as a public vocation, and as part of the whole. 
A timetable for video screening and cinema, as well as interventions in public spaces, completes this program for Dak’Art 2014, anchored in both reality and the imaginary. We hope this ensemble will provide a space and time to think about art, politics, and affirm that being together is the only horizon for human creation. “

By the curators: Elise Atangana, Abdelkader Damani, Smooth Ugochukwu Nzewi.

Venue: Village of the Biennale, Route de Rufisque.

Don’t miss the work of Morton Fine Art’s VICTOR EKPUK on view at DAK’ART 2014.  For available work by this internationally celebrated artist, please visit http://www.mortonfineart.com.

Victor Ekpuk, Soliloquy Series 5, 15"x12", collage, ink & tempera on handmade paper

Victor Ekpuk, Soliloquy Series 5, 15″x12″, collage, ink & tempera on handmade paper

VICTOR EKPUK’s “State of Beings (Totem)” at Dak’Art 2014

29 Apr

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State of Beings (Totem) : installation, 220 x510x452x4 cm, acrylic vinyl and metal on wood panel and vinyl mat, 2013, Courtesy of the artist and Fondation Jean-Paul Blachère, Apt, France.

State of Beings is a mixed media installation that combines painting and sculpture in equal measure. The sculptural portion of the work stands upright against the wall whereas the painting is primarily on the floor. The two connect through the continuous lines of Nsibidi, an ancient graphic system that is autochthonous to south-eastern Nigeria and the Ejagham area of northern Cameroon. The swirling script-like patterns of State of Beings are also based on Ekpuk’s own invented signs. The fluidity of the symbols creates continuity in the installation, merging the wall into the ground seamlessly. Conceptually, the installation is a totemic portrayal of the male-female binary as composite of the human condition. The two figures physically face each other. Their emotional and psychic connection is evident in the thick red line that runs across the work, from the head of the male figure to the head of the female.

Victor Ekpuk was born in Nigeria in 1964. In 1989 Victor received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree (BFA), Obafemi Awowolo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he first explored the aesthetic philosophies in indigenous African art forms like Nsibidi, and Uli. Their economy of lines and encoded meanings led him to further explore drawing as writing, and to the invention of his own glyphs. In addition to operating a painting studio in Lagos, he was also a prominent editorial illustrator/political cartoonist for Nigerian newspapers before moving to the United States in 1999. He currently lives and works in Washington DC. His artworks are in private and public collections such as Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, Newark Museum, The World Bank, University of Maryland University College, Hood Museum, United States Art in Embassies Art Collection, Fidelity Investment Art Collection. Victor’s work have been featured in such venues as Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois, USA, Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, USA. Museum of Art and Design (MAD), New York City, USA. Newark Museum, New Jersey, USA. The World Bank, Washington DC, USA. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA. New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, USA. Johannesburg Biennial, South Africa.

View available artwork by visiting http://www.mortonfineart.com