Binta Diaw is an Italian-Senegalese artist born in Milan, Italy, in 1995. She lives and works between Milan and Dakar, Senegal. Binta Diaw is a graduate of the Accademia di belle arti di Brera di Milano in Milan, and the École d'Art et de Design de Grenoble in France.
Binta Diaw's visual research takes shape at the confluence of philosophical and historical reflections on the social phenomena that define our contemporary world, such as migration, the notion of belonging, the relationship with history and its archives, and the question of gender. Her work is often conceived in the form of installations and site-specific projects that can take on a monumental dimensions.
Nourishing her practice with contributions from intersectionality and eco-feminism, Binta Diaw places great importance on physical and sensory experience in her work: it becomes a privileged place for expressing the power of materiality and its impact on perceptions. Earth, plants, water, stone, hair and sometimes her own body are all part of the artist's visual language. From one work to the next, they constantly remind the viewer of his or her organic, moving nature, as well as that of a social and political being. Often immersed in site-specific spaces, where the context of the work's display acts in shaping its meaning on several levels, viewers must reconnect with their place in the world if they are to grasp the scope and multiple connections that take place within the works.
Drawing on her diasporic and fluid identity, Binta Diaw questions the dominant viewpoints of history, reintroducing a plurality of narratives through a remarkable economy of means. The artist thus proposes a decentering of an exclusively Eurocentric vision of history, and asserts her artistic gestures as complex rewritings of history.
Recent exhibitions (selection): uMoya – The Sacred Return of Lost Things, Liverpool Biennale (United Kingdom, 2023) ; Inflitrées – 5 manières d’habiter le monde, Reiffers Art Initiatives, Paris (France, 2023) ; Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono — On Multiplicity, Difference, Becoming and Heritage, 13th Bamako Encounters (Mali, 2022) ; Paysages, Magasins Généraux, Grenoble, (France, 2022) ; Still Present !, 12th Berlin Biennale, (Germany, 2022) ; The Land of Our Birth is a Woman, Centrale Fies, Dro (Italy, 2022) ; Toolu Xeer, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Dakar (Sénégal, 2022) ;Unraveling The (Under-) Development Complex or Toward A Post – (Under-) Development Interdependance, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (Germany, 2022) ; Les tirés ailleurs, Bungalow Chert Lüdde, Berlin (Germany, 2022) ; The Recovery Plan, devoir de mémoire à l’italienne, Institut Culturel Italien, Paris (France, 2022).