DAKAR. – As the international art world flocks to Dakar for the African art biennale, Senegalese artist Fally Sene Sow only has to look out the window to find inspiration in the chaotic street market outside his studio in the capital.
Normally colorful and bustling, the area in Dakar’s Colobane district became much more sombre during the pandemic, prompting Sow to create an apocalyptic vision of what his neighborhood could become.
The result is an installation that fills an entire room of about 30 sq. metres (323 sq. ft), where model buildings are in a state of collapse, skeletons hang next to hybrid animals, thunder rumbles overhead and decaying waste generates heat, all of which combined create a foreboding atmosphere.
“It is mind-blowing,” said Ifeoma Dile, an art enthusiast who came from London to see the Dakar Biennale, which kicked off on Thursday. “I have goosebumps just looking at all this and how long must it have taken him to create that in this space? It is amazing.”
Sow is one of 59 artists or collectives officially selected for the exhibition – one of the continent’s oldest, large-scale celebrations of contemporary African art – which runs until June 21.
Expectations are heightened because this biennale, Dakar’s 14th, is being held two years late after the coronavirus pandemic forced a postponement in 2020.
“I live at the heart of the market and so I have this theatre before me,” he told Reuters from his cluttered atelier on Wednesday, giving the final touches to his mixed-media pieces before they went on show.
The biennale’s curators have a similar wish.
Over the next month, some 250,000 art lovers and movers and shakers of the art world are expected to visit shows at the capital’s many galleries and its grand Museum of Black Civilizations.
“In Senegal few people consume art,” Sow noted.
