Around ten Barbadian artists, around fifty Senegalese artists. The arts village served as a setting for this exchange between two worlds that history and geography bring together. As part of the Dakar Contemporary Art Biennale, the discussion is opened by this “Transatlantique 1” program.
Par Mame Woury THIOUBOU –
“We are the people who left Gorée, El Mina and all these slave ports in Africa.” These words are those of Nyzinga Onifa, coordinator of the “Transatlantique 1” exhibition. These words resonated during the exhibition that around ten painters from Barbados are holding at the Dakar Arts Village. As a snub to history, these artists whose ancestors were deported to the holds of slave ships returned to Senegalese soil. Entitled “Transatlantique 1”, the exhibition is a dialogue between these Caribbean artists and their Senegalese counterparts with whom they share the walls of the Galerie Léopold Sédar Senghor in the Village des arts. Nyzinga Onifa lived in Senegal for 10 years. And to reduce the lack of information about her home island, she designed this exchange program now implemented by the Barbados National Cultural Foundation.
These artists, 11 in number, present 20 works as part of this exchange. Facing them, around fifty Senegalese artists. “Art has the value of bringing people together,” underlines the artist Zulu Mbaye, partner in the organization of this event. The links between Africa and Barbados are very real. Just look at the themes explored by the artists. Water is in fact at the center of the works presented by the Barbadians. Risée Chaderton-Charles is an artist whose works depict underwater creatures. An art photographer, she is delighted to see the convergence of interests around this element. “What struck me was the relationship with the sea. Water means a lot to us. When we feel bad, we make libations, when we are thirsty, we drink water and we meet in places where there is water for certain forms of prayer. I explore the sea, the elements and all this life in the water.”
Committed to the work of memory, David Guru presents The Arrivals, a sculpture of a pre-Columbian indigenous African vessel. It thus pays tribute to the ingenuity of Africans in the Caribbean before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Ras Akyem-i Ramsay navigates the altered consciousness of artists who have been alienated, oppressed, marginalized, imprisoned and terrorized. His painting where the bright colors attract the eye, represents objects, the symbol of inner turmoil.
From Dakar to Barbados
The Atlantic separates Africa from this archipelago of Barbados. But Dakar remains the closest land after Cape Verde. “The geographical aspect is very important. There are archipelagos in the Caribbean and Barbados, and everyone should know that Dakar is the closest part to Barbados. When you cross the Atlantic, you have Cape Verde and then Barbados. Some days we have black skies like it’s going to rain, but they’re dust clouds from the Sahara desert. During my comings and goings between Senegal and Barbados, I saw the need for relations between the two countries,” explains Ms. Onigua, whose desire to bring these two peoples together gave birth to this artistic program. Transatlantic 1”. Mor Faye, Kemboury Bessane, Adama Ba, Fola Lawson, Zulu Mbaye, are some of the Senegalese artists participating in the exhibition.
The celebration could have been better if the physical works of Barbadian artists could have been displayed. Indeed, due to transport constraints, these works have not yet reached Dakar. A heartbreak for these artists who designed their works in perspective of this meeting with the Senegalese public. And they did not hesitate to emphasize it during this last afternoon of conference in the exhibition hall of the Village des arts. “I work on the basis of colors, which conveys the way I live and what I feel. Different blue colors to translate different aspects and moments of the sea. What the screen obliterates,” laments Risée Chaderton-Charles. For Ras Akyem-i Ramsay, seeing his work through one of the television screens installed on the walls and which broadcast the works in a loop is a real heartbreak. “Words are not enough to convey what I feel,” says the artist.
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