Biennale de Dakar 2022

19.05.2022 - 21.06.2022

Biennale de Dakar 2022
14th Edition

Fourteenth edition of the Dakar Biennale: 59 artists and artists' collectives to forge a new common destiny
Create, imagine and invent. It is around this triptych that the official international exhibition of the 14th edition of the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar (May 19-June 21, 2022) will take place.

The official selection, consistent with the orientations of the Artistic Direction, will highlight the works of 59 visual artists and artists' collectives. They come from Africa and its diaspora. According to Dr El Hadji Malick Ndiaye , Artistic Director of the 2022 Edition, the theme Ĩ Ndaffa# sounds like an exhortation to create a new common destiny, a future together.

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Tribute to Abdoulaye Konaté, the stuff of a master

A master. The Malian visual artist is without a doubt. The 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale will pay tribute to Abdoulaye Konaté, winner of the 1996 Grand Prix.

With a look that makes sense, the critic and art historian El Hadji Malick Ndiaye analyzes the work of Abdoulaye Konaté, which is distinguished by the use of fabric as a material of choice enhanced by a reinvented pictoriality.

As for the approach that guides his work, observes Ndiaye, two lines of force cross Konaté's work: aesthetics and sociopolitics. “On the one hand, aesthetics results from working with materials. The dexterity of the artist lies in his ability to play with textiles, giving them reliefs and shapes, with a graduation of colors that suggests movement just on the basis of the nuance of the hues", notes the Museum Curator. Theodore Monod of Dakar. He pushes his reflection: “His compositions testify to a subtle chromaticism in the arrangement of the pieces of fabric and the presence of important reliefs thanks to integrated objects. The minimalist regularity of the discontinuous bands introduces the formation of volumes and creates optical effects that sometimes come in a series of abstractions”.

From a sociopolitical point of view, observes E. Malick Ndiaye, the work of Abdoulaye Konaté is marked by a profound humanism which resides in his ability to name cultural, social and political relations. At this level, notes the art historian, the evocative power of the titles he gives to his works imprints a singularity on his work, it becomes an introspection of History and Memory.

For El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, the works of Abdoulaye Konaté are scores of human drama and collective unconsciousness that evoke the ills of men and their difficulty in forging together a common destiny.