With our correspondent in Dakar, Juliet Dubois
In Dakar, the artist Mbaye Diop sketches the Senegalese capital and its contrasts. In his “Match Ball” exhibition at the Selebe Yoon Gallery, his drawings and black and white animated films reveal the architectural diversity of the city, but also the way in which the people of Dakar inhabit it.
Before the Beaux-Arts, Mbaye Diop first studied architecture. And the visual artist’s first loves are never far away: in his black pencil drawings, many buildings in Dakar; from old wooden shacks to colonial buildings. His creation begins first with photos that he takes during his walks.
“I have the digital photo like this, on my computerhe explains. I contrast the black and white photo, I project the photo onto paper. And, from the projection, I make the reproduction, while trying to really stand out from the very reality of the photo”.
A work that also raises the question of the development of Dakar »
In his works on paper and in animated video, the poetic silhouettes of buildings, but also of Dakar residents. On one of the walls, a series of 124 drawings of characters holding a tennis racket. As a metaphor for a match between architectures, but also a way of reclaiming the city.
“There are people I met in the streets of Dakar, says Mbaye Diop. JI walk around with my racket, so I ask them if they can play tennis in the street, they are so happy, happy like that. It also raises the question of the development of space, the development of Dakar, play areas also at Dakar level which almost do not exist.
The “Match ball” exhibition is free to access at the Selebe Yoon Gallery until March 4.
We were interested in the Lebou community, as the indigenous people of the Dakar peninsula, and the first occupants who are still there, and who show us precisely how throughout history their spaces, which are called “penc “, have been transformed and have remained in the Dakar factory today.
The architect Nzinga Mboup, from the Worofila agency, on the Lebou community, one of the first to have lived on the Dakar peninsula:
