Category: Artist Interviews & Studio Visits
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At the Venice Biennale, Kaloki Nyamai’s Vast Installations Confront Chaos and Healing – Interview
Amid the crowds and national pavilions of the Venice Biennale, Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai remains focused on questions of connection, healing, and human fragmentation. At the Arsenale, his monumental works are impossible to ignore. Rising like immense suspended surfaces within the exhibition space, they are undoubtedly among the most striking and physically overwhelming installations of…
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For Omar Ba, the Canvas Is a Political Battlefield: “Art Is Not a Game. It’s a Form of Violence.”
The day everything changed, Omar Ba was sitting in a classroom at a technical school in Dakar, Senegal, facing an impossible assignment. Rather than hand in a blank page, he drew a figure being stabbed in the back. His mechanics teacher looked at the drawing, then at the student, and asked a simple question: “What…
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Birame Ndiaye’s ‘Urban Jungle’: Painting the Shadows of Dakar
Birame Ndiaye (b.1968), a Senegalese visual artist from Pikine, a working-class suburb of Dakar where he grew up, has been developing for over thirty years a body of work deeply rooted in urban reality, which he calls Urban Jungle — the city as jungle: a dense, ruthless and vital environment governed by the laws of…
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For Senegal at the Venice Biennale, Caroline Gueye’s Inquiry Into Gold and Perception
When the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia opens its doors on May 9, under the title In Minor Keys, Senegal will present its second official national pavilion. Curated by Massamba Mbaye, the pavilion features Caroline Gueye, a Senegalese artist whose rigorously conceptual work moves fluidly between the precise languages of astrophysics…
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In Côte d’Ivoire, a Sculptor Gives Form to the Unseen
In this interview conducted in Abidjan, Soro Kafana welcomes us into the intimate space where he lives and thinks about his art. Born in Côte d’Ivoire to a family of blacksmiths and farmers, Soro Kafana today “forges” wood with a chainsaw—a powerful, noisy tool that he wields with remarkable sensitivity. For him, sculpting means liberating…
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African Design Is Rising. Hicham Lahlou, One of Its Pioneers, Explains Why.
For thirty years, the Moroccan designer and interior architect has built a language that fuses African heritage with global modernism. A graduate of the Académie Charpentier in Paris, Lahlou is regarded as one of the leading figures in contemporary African and Arab design — a pioneer who helped place the continent on the international map…
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The Artist Within Society: Insights from Jacobleu
In October, Ivorian multidisciplinary artist Jacobleu was in Dakar as part of preparations for the upcoming first edition of West African Festival of Arts and Culture (ECOFEST), a regional initiative supported by ECOWAS and UEMOA. His role in the organisation involves contributing to several artistic programmes and working closely with cultural actors across the region.…
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‘Painting Feels Like Prayer’ for Keemetaane’s Mystic Canvases
Born in Linguère, in northeastern Senegal, where the rhythms of rural life left no room for canvas or paint, Babacar Ndiaye grew up without an artistic tradition to guide him. His early career unfolded in Senegal’s tourism sector, , a role that first carried him abroad and honed his sense of cultural ambassadorship. Known as…
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“We Are All Bidons”: Romuald Hazoumè’s Jerrycan Masks Mock a Wasteful World
Romuald Hazoumè’s voice—blunt, defiant, uncompromising—carries the same raw force as his iconic masks made from jerrycans. These sculptures, fashioned from discarded petrol containers, evoke Benin’s shadow economy of fuel smuggling with Nigeria, where many risk their lives transporting volatile loads on modified motorcycles for hidden profiteers. For decades, Hazoumè has transformed waste into works that…
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How Agnes Essonti Luque Reclaims African Memory Through Photography and Ritual
To navigate between worlds — this might be the most fitting way to describe the practice of Agnes Essonti Luque, born to a Spanish mother and a Cameroonian father, whose work, both intimate and political, transcends disciplinary, geographic, and symbolic boundaries. At once a performer, photographer, curator, and cook, she draws on ancestral memory, diasporic…
Bridging Africa and The World Through Contemporary Art 