Mamadou Boye Diallo

Mamadou Boye Diallo, known as Modboye or Patin, was born on October 9, 1988, in the Médina (Dakar). By 15, he was passionate about rollerblading, break-dancing and urban cultures. He worked in street marketing, taught rollerblading and participated in fashion shows. He won several Senegal roller-skating championship titles and was invited to festivals in Spain. In 2010, he created the NGO Yataal Art, meaning “expanding art” in Wolof, whose mission is to promote and support talented young people in the neighborhood.

Modboye has organized many art events and workshops for raising consciousness about such issues as the environment and migration. He founded the Outdoor Museum, inviting more than a hundred artists from around the world to paint in the Médina. The direct impact of street art led him to turn his attention to the walls themselves and to preserve the historic architecture of the neighborhood. As part of the Médina Centenary in 2014, Modboye organized twelve exhibitions in traditional houses. In 2016, he participated actively in the Dakar Biennale, with IFAA Art Platform in a tribute to the Congolese artist Kiripi Katembo, and in the off programming with a new traveling exhibition in two houses and throughout the alleyways of the Medina. He discovered the artist Pape Diop and started collecting his works before curating a solo exhibition at the Almadies Ceramics Workshop during Partcours 2016.

In 2018, Diallo initiated several projects at the Dakar Biennale: in the official selection as part of the Urbi project with his proposal to open Outdoor Museum to international artists; he organized the exhibition Dakar Brut, for which he was one of the curators; and he was a guest artist at The Matter # 2 at Les Viviers where he built a cascade of plastic bottles collapsing into the ocean to raise awareness about marine pollution.