After cutting the wool threads with scissors, Seydina Oumar Cissé turns the roller of the loom: little by little, the tapestry unfolds and the work takes shape before her eyes.
The 28-year-old Senegalese weaver contemplates for the first time the result of six months of work. The shapes, the colors, the patterns… Everything is identical to the original creation of the Senegalese artist Cheikh Diouf. “It’s a great satisfaction,” he says.
Mr. Cissé is a craftsman at the Senegalese decorative arts factories in Thiès, a reference in artistic production on the African continent. His creations adorn the walls of organizations around the world, from the headquarters of the United Nations in New York to that of the African Union in Addis Ababa, as well as many palaces of heads of state.
This flagship of the cultural policy of the former president and poet Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001) has regained its vigor thanks to new partnerships, such as with the house of Chanel, and a diversification of its activities.
Manufactures “are sparking a renewed interest, driven locally by galleries which have international stature and a return of enthusiasm for textiles and tapestries” on the art market, estimates Coline Desportes, research manager at the National Institute of Art History (INHA).
Legacy
When they were created in 1966, six years after the independence of Senegal, Mr. Senghor set them an objective: “to create a new art for a new nation”. In Africa, the art of weaving worked wonders, particularly in clothing, but wall tapestry was until then unknown in the country.
Two years earlier, four artisans had gone to train in France, the former colonial power, in the famous Gobelins and Aubusson factories, to acquire the know-how of leather makers.
This new art was to be “the symbiosis of techniques imported from France and traditional culture”, he said.
Mr. Senghor’s legacy has been preserved, not without difficulty. After him, the State withdrew, tapestry fell out of fashion and the establishment almost disappeared, before orders started to rise again in the 2000s.
This day at the end of April, the old colonial barracks with white and green walls, located in a green setting in the heart of Thiès, 70 kilometers east of Dakar, serves as the setting for the shooting of a historical film.
In the workshops, craftsmen have no room for error. Carefully, they follow the outline of the cardboard on their loom. The wool comes from Europe, the cotton from Thiès. Each work, selected during a competition, can be reproduced in eight copies.
Diversification
A short distance away, around thirty American tourists listen to the explanations of Abdou Diouf, head of the cardboard workshop which produces the model guiding all the weaving operations.
The group lingers around a curtain of multicolored “rosaries” displayed on the wall. “Each of these rosaries is made up of the woolen threads which make up the tapestries created here, with the name of the artist and his work. I usually say that it is the very soul of the factories, its hooked story”, indicates Abdou Diouf.
The reception of tourists and film crews testifies to the diversification of the activities of the public establishment, of an industrial and commercial nature.
The general director, Aloyse Diouf, assures that 14 rooms will soon be available to welcome visitors, as well as an artists’ residence. “We want to make factories a cultural locomotive, a link between art and tourism,” he says, even if state orders remain essential to its existence.
“Tapestries are not necessarily linked to our history and have remained mainly elitist; it is mainly the authorities who buy them to contribute to the artistic influence of Senegal,” underlines Mr. Diouf. “The appropriation of this art form by the Senegalese is a long-term project that we are developing by inviting schools to visit the factories.”
Now, beyond their main activity, the factories also create prayer rugs, batik and ceramics, products a little more accessible for the Senegalese than the wall tapestry whose price rises to 1.5 million CFA francs per square meter, or around 2,300 euros.
