In Dakar on a month-long residency, during its Biennial, there is much good tradition-based art variants, and both a disturbing and refreshing lack of theory and institutional critique. The city seems make-shift in its beauty, decay, pollution, and sale to foreigners. There are pubic beaches, but no parks; historic buildings are preserved only by private institutions; the Chinese built the Museum of Black Civilizations. Self-sufficiency staggers, but, the poor who ask for Francs on every block are sincere, gracious, and dignified, without fabricated hard luck stories. I give what I can. A one-legged woman collects change in her prosthetic, I resolve to make her post cards to increase the take.
Senegal is 94% Islam, 51% literate, and 22% unemployed. As sanctioned by Islamic custom, orphans and children from poor families, Talibés (link to Harvard Human Rights Journal), some only five, are given to a marabout (Qur’an teacher) to panhandle all day. They flock to events at embassies, concerts, rush hour traffic, and give him their haul for room, board, and (religious) education. Despite the 85º heat and 80% humidity, some are dressed in hoodies, and their regulation of internal temperature amazes.
Diesel clouds are so dense that busses that emit them are erased. The smog and Sahara dust are cleaned only by the ocean winds. Run-down taxis operate without seat belts. A consortium of Japanese, Indian, and French firms build a desalination plant that will dump its tailings into the ocean, with accelerated erosion and disaster for marine life predicted. This is near a beautiful (soon to be privatized with Chinese condos) beach with cheap, restaurant shacks, and a pet pelican that catches balls and pops birthday balloons. Farther down the coast, a deep-sea port will have similar affects. The president has unconstitutionally jailed four parliamentarians for demonstrating with the opposition party. Decay, erosion, and dust go on forever.
These socio-economic topographies osmose into redeemed materials of felt, magic marker, acrylic, sand, and inks of what it is like before and after being here. The organic and mechanical mix with chaos and stability and focus on the transitions between forms. A stack of cars on fire heats the ocean into rain that fills lakes. A whale skeleton swims between DNA, cars, chemical reactions, and plants. A transparent beetle channels the toxins of an industrial forest. These paintings (begun there) reconcile as they can. The show, held in a temporary space, holds some future promise.
Untitled (Auto Tier series), mixed media on felt, 135 x 84 cm, 2022