Beyond the Bienniale! Exciting Events Happening in Dakar

While the Ministry of Culture may have canceled what was anticipated to be one of Dakar’s standout events of the year, The Dakar Biennale, following the influences of the national and international environment, as well as a recent change in cultural leadership aimed at maintaining the Biennale’s high standards, the city’s creative scene remains vibrant. Originally slated for May 16 to June 16, 2024, the Biennale’s general theme of “The Wake,“ curated by Salimata Diop, Art Critic, and Curator, along with the official exhibitions featuring the United States of America and the Republic of Cabo Verde, will now hold from November 7 to December 7, 2024. This edition reflects on current political, ecological, and social changes, with a particular focus on the city of Dakar itself.

Dakar holds creative events during the dates slated for the Biennale. Image courtesy of Annika Hammerschlag/BBC Africa

Despite the Biennale’s integral role in Dakar’s cultural landscape, its activities typically unfold between mid-May and mid-June. In the meantime, here’s a curated selection of must-see events.

Black Rock Sénégal: Encounters

Artists: Adrian L.Burrell, Amina Kadous, Ayan Farah, Chinwe Chigbu, Enam Gbewonyo, Gouled Ahmed , Khalif Tahir Thompson, Leonard Pongo, Mae-Ling Lokko, Nengi Omuku, Panmela Castro, Paul Verdell, Sophia Nahli-Allison, Stephen Hayes, Kwabena Appiah-Nti, Ousmane Ba, Lilah Benetti, Makrone Diop, Souleye Fall, Timothy Hunter, Chase Johnson, Ngimbi Bakambana Luve, Ange-Frederic Koffi, Nicolas Lambelet Coleman, Samuel Nnorom, Ardeshir Tabrizi, Keith Tuttii

Location: Blaise Senghor Cultural Center

Dates: May 16 – June 16

Opening Reception: May 16

Encounters is an exhibition of work by Black Rock artists-in-residence from years 3 and 4. Curated by Dr Jareh Das, Encounters focuses on how many encounters – from the personal to collective, past, present, and future – shape artist’s perceptions of who they are and their place in the world.

Dem Dikk/Viavai

Artists: Jukai, Djibril Dramé, Stefania Gesualdo

Location: Institut Culturel Italien de Dakar, 48 Léon Gontran Damas, Fann Résidence

Dates: May 21 – July 14

Opening Reception: May 21 at 6:00pm

Curated by Mohamed A.Cissé, Dem Dikk/Viavai is a research project on the Sandaga market, focusing in particular on its memory as an intangible heritage. The exhibition brings together Italian and Senegalese artists with the aim of recounting the extraordinarily vital identity of Dakar’s most popular market, a veritable emblem and heart of the informal economy, now undergoing rehabilitation.

Khalifa Hussein: Lingeer

Location: Institut Culturel Italien de Dakar, 48 Léon Gontran Damas, Fann Résidence

Dates: May 18 – June 14

Opening Reception: May 21 at 6:00pm

Curator ART KCISS invites photographer Khalifa Hussein to show his pictures of the protests in 2023 and 2022.

Export-Import

Artists: Younes Baba-Ali, Mbaye Diop, and Hamedine Kane

Location: Selebe Yoon

Dates: May 15 – June 27

Opening Reception: May 15 at 6:00pm

‘Import-export’, a term widely used in international trade, suggests a dynamic exchange between two territories, a transcontinental transactional relationship often asymmetrical and unbalanced. Beyond economic globalization, the importation of cultures, customs, forms, and knowledge has occurred long before the liberalization of trade exchanges in this century, from the colonial era to the present, sometimes imperceptibly. By observing certain sports, leisure activities, or economic sectors, each artist reveals unexpected networks and invisible trajectories that conceal mechanisms of subordination and dynamics of power.

Zohra Opoku: With every fibre of (my) being

Location: RAW Material Company

Dates: May 19 – June 16

Opening Reception: May 19 at 11:00am

Through her multidisciplinary practice, Zohra Opoku addresses the complex issues of belonging and return for Afro-diasporic identities. Her personal experience raises more universal questions regarding feelings of acceptance and otherness, the phenomenon of cognitive identification and the resulting societal responsibilities.

Na Chainkua Reindorf: Strange Flesh

Location: Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

Dates: May 15 – August 24

Opening Reception: May 19 at 11:00am

Na Chainkua Reindorf (b. 1991, Ghana) is a multidisciplinary artist with a deep interest in world-building and mythmaking through the art of the masquerade. Upon imagining a fictional female masquerade society, Reindorf’s art practice is currently focused on creating artworks ranging from paintings and tapestries to sculptural installations which serve as referential visual lexicon for this imagined world. Inspired by personal experiences and exploring West African folklore and religious cosmologies, Reindorf is interested in masquerading as an intervention through which guises and mutable personalities can be used to explore deviancy and non-conformity.

Branching Streams. Sketches of Kinship

Location: Théodore Monod Museum of African Art

Dates: May 18 – September 15

Opening Reception: May 18 at 6:00 pm

Branching Streams. Sketches of Kinship is conceived in the frame of the transnational research project ‘Reconnecting “Objects”. Epistemic Plurality and Transformative Practices in and beyond Museums’ (2021-2025). It brings together scholars and artists living and working between Africa and Europe.

African Art Book Fair (AABF)

Location: Place du Souvenir Africain, Corniche Ouest, Aime Cesaire, BP 25888, Dakar

Date: May 16 – May 19

AABF will welcome international independent publishers and artists with a program of panels, exhibitions, workshops and events.The perfect occasion to highlight new and innovative publishing practices, to encourage exchanges and the circulation of knowledge during talks and informal moments.