Les arts de la citoyenneté au Sénégal : espaces contestés et civilités urbaines

Within this small photo box one finds one of the only photographic archives of the large-scale murals painted by the late Senegalese artist Papisto Boy. Using whatever materials he could find, or allowing tourists to photograph his murals in exchange for paints, Papisto Boy spent three decades covering the wall of a fish factory with images drawn from popular culture, ancient history, religion, myth or his own daily life. Papisto wanted the workers walking past the wall to enjoy and learn from the fruits of his labours, which he updated frequently, replacing faces and words washed away by the annual rains. Known widely as Senegal’s first graffiti artist, these photos are an important snapshot of Papisto Boy’s talent, as well as syncretic reference points of the Senegalese culture of the era. 

This slim publication is an anthology of rumours, love letters, poems and visual essays that trace the life of the Médina, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Senegal’s capital of Dakar. Created by the French in 1914 in an act of segregation, the Médina is today renowned for its strong community and activist spirit, verging on the rebellious at times. Fréquence Painthon allows readers a glimpse into the idiosyncrasies of this part of the city, not least through its homage to the eponymous breakfast sandwich that is a staple of daily life here and that becomes a symbol of the habits and interactions which sustain the fluidity of public and private life in Dakar. 

Ousmane Sow Huchard, known as Soleya Mama, is one of the few people who still remember Senegal’s artistic history from its independence to the present day. His book La Culture, ses objets-témoins et l’action muséologique [Culture, its Witness-objects and the Museological Action] resumes his professional career – he is an anthropologist, museologist, musicologist and art critic who fought for museum studies to be rethought from the point of view of our cultural, social and religious history – and edifies us on the way with how this history was constructed as well as the political, geopolitical and economic issues that conditioned it. This book is considered an important reference work for those wanting to find out more about what those years were like in Senegal. Moreover, and in addition to the fact that his fondness for the poet-president is, so to speak, tangible in reading these memoirs, the fact that archival elements are reproduced here (letters, speeches, transcripts of radio messages, as well as photographs, etc.) makes it a reliable measuring instrument for us all.

This book is a major contribution to the research on African cities. It identifies different socio-political, cultural and aesthetic sensibilities that were new at the time and which are brought into conversation with well-established practices in Senegalese society. Rich and diverse in forms, the practices analysed range from the technique of suwèr (painting under glass) to Senegalese hip-hop, through a look at waste management and its actors. The negotiations and reconfigurations of urban and imagined spaces underpinned by the arrival of new young people complicates the analysis of African cities. The contributions have the merit of following this density by moving away from a certain analysis which would have struggled to grasp the workings of these arts of citizenship. 

One part of a wider project that also includes exhibitions and community assemblies, Ruines et Futurs brings together reflections and testimonies around the site of the abandoned Université du Futur Africain in the Diamniadio region of Senegal. Situated just outside of the capital, Diamniadio and its neighbouring communes are today positioned as the ground upon which an African city of the future will arise – the Dubai of Africa – despite the soil being irrigation land suited to agriculture, historically the green lung of the nearby city. The texts and images are an intersection at which histories and futures of space, education, self-determination and earth meet. 

In 1965, at the age of 17, Touré left the newly founded republic of Mali, and travelled to the capital of its former colonizer, France, to work in the car industry, underpaid and with an unsustainable number of working hours. After purchasing a small Kodak Retinette, he started to document the precarious working and living conditions of migrant workers and their struggles. In 1975/76 he and several members of the independent Association Culturel des Travailleurs Africains (Cultural Association of African Workers) decided to engage in farming in the region of Haute-Marne. In 1977, Touré along with fourteen former activist migrant workers founded the agricultural cooperative Somankidi Coura on the shore of the Senegal River. They decided to propose an alternative way of thinking and subsistence agriculture (une agriculture vivrière/ouvrier) meant to provide alimentary self-sufficiency. Somankidi Coura has and is driven by a strong socialist ideal of self-sustainment, inter-dependence and connectedness. Today, the cooperative is run by around five hundred people representing an extraordinary example of agriculture as a site of resistance, including cooperatives that generate healthy rural self-organised communities. The local school building houses Touré’s photographic archive of Somankidi Coura’s development throughout the decades, to inspire other communities in building new planetary alternatives based on practices of soil care. Sowing Somankidi Coura: A Generative Archive is a long-term research endeavour by the French artist Raphaël Grisey in collaboration with Bouba Touré and other co-founders of the cooperative around the permacultures and archives of Somankidi Coura. JW