Dakar Biennale goes away with clichés about African art

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  Saskia Houttuin

  Africa journalist

The music is on, there is a table full of snacks and Habibatou Yaye Keita has put on a dress with glitter. “This is my first solo exhibition abroad,” says the Malian artist proudly, at the opening of her colorful exhibition People of the river (people by the river). “It means a lot to me, because it is a great honor to be involved in the Dakar Biennale.

Every two years, artists and enthusiasts from all over the world gather in the Senegalese capital for this main event, also known as Dak’Art. This autumn, after a six-month postponement, the 15th edition will take place. Slowly but surely, contemporary art from Africa is gaining an increasingly prominent place on the international art market.

Keita takes part in the ‘Off’, a program organized by dozens of art galleries. In Galerie Arte, her vision from time to time shines to the door that always lets in new people of interest. “An exhibition in Senegal is very important to me,” says the young artist, who has to work as a hairdresser in Mali to make ends meet. Her pointillist paintings sell almost home country. “But here the art department is very dynamic. Here you have more galleries, more art collectors and meetings with other artists.”

So today’s African art is doing better and better. Works by African artists are sold at auction for higher prices. The biennale in Dakar is a good indicator of this, says Anna-Alix Koffi, owner of a gallery in Ivory Coast and curator of the exhibition NFT Africa. “This is the most important art fair on the continent, the whole world is watching.”

However, according to Koffi, important steps are still to be taken, for example when it comes to financial and moral support for artists. “The creativity you find on this continent is amazing,” she says. “Some people understand that, and others don’t. Politicians in Africa must realize that art is better than force just like sports.”

Outside the continent, there is still a cliché image of what African art is, or should be in the eyes of others.

In a dark room it is on NFT Africa a series of ten digital artworks, made by artists from Africa or the diaspora, will be shown on screens. This is the type of art that she believes is still not really connected to the African continent, says Koffi. “People still think in colonial terms, but something is changing: artists are increasingly taking matters into their own hands, they say no more often. “

Khady Postma, who is working on a travel guide to Senegal, thinks the same. “There’s definitely still a lot to be gained in the field of art and in the art world when it comes to decolonization,” she said as she walked through the biennale’s main venue, the old courthouse. . “I don’t think we’re there yet. But I know that initiatives, such as the Dakar Biennale, can play a big part in this.”

The NOS walked around the old courthouse with the Senegalese-Dutch Khady Postma: