D’une rive à l’autre

With works by:

Marie Helene Pereira

Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy

Babacar Mbaye Ndaak

Dr Serigne Sylla

Thierno Seydou Sall

Carole Diop

Nzinga Mboup

Dakar. Curfew. Does everything stop?

While human beings criss-cross the city without concern for the space that we share with sacred, non-material beings, the current moment reminds us of the important and more than urgent necessity to let nature breathe. 

Confinement functioned as a time of observation and rediscovery of the elements that shape human beings, their origins and their beliefs. The COVID-19 crisis has sewn chaos throughout the world, has upturned habits and behaviours and has taken apart institutions and the physical ties that exist between humans. Edging this reflection a little further, would it not be useful to also consider the crisis as a moment of collective reconciliation with nature? 

Because many a ghost returned during this pause; ghosts existential, emotional, spiritual, political…Empty streets at nightfall, a strange calm, the opportune moment for the shared fulfilment of a return to nature. 

Having grown up in Senegal, the imaginary of Ibrahima Thiam has been in part structured by the legends surrounding the Lebu divinities and their relationships to the coastal cities of Dakar, Rufisque, Saint Louis and Yoff. Water-based rituals constitute sacred practices for maintaining healthy relationships between the protective spirits of these cities and their communities. 

Working predominantly with photography, Ibrahima Thiam is interested in memory, the archive, African orality and imaginary histories. The relationship that RAW is building with his work emerges as a succession of conversations, of which the exhibition D’une rive à l’autre (“From shore to shore”) is part. He has continuously brought us into the presence of the imaginaries that live in him and that nourish him over the course of moments suspended in time, between the two shores of worlds visible and invisible, between earth and water. 

Following Maam Coumba Bang (2019) and Maam Ndeuk Daour Mbaye (2020), Maam Njaré Jaw (2020), the third divinity convoked by Thiam, reveals itself to us in the framework of his residency at RAW. Beyond the artworks and the exhibition, the residency is a commitment to document and render visible his process of creation.