Binta Diaw was born in 1995 in Milan, where she lives and works today. The Italian-Senegalese artist dives into multicultural history as a black woman in a Europeanized world.
Often deployed in the form of installations, her works are part of a reflection on social phenomena such as migration, the notion of belonging or the question of gender. She gives a great role to the physical and sensory experience of the spectator so that he recognizes his place.
With great economy of means, Binta Diaw's installation, 1. 12. 44. (2022), evokes the massacre of Thiaroye near Dakar in December 1944. The Senegalese riflemen hired by the French army colonies returned home to the barracks of Thiaroye. Unable to obtain their pay from the army and protesting against this iniquity, they were murdered by the French forces under conditions that remain unclear. This story remains an open wound of French colonization in Senegal, as no institutional initiative has been put in place to repent or pay tribute to the victims.
The work 1. 12. 44. (2022) evokes a field of fertile soil, cut into tracks commonly used in agriculture that recall the work that the tirailleurs performed. It also echoes the trenches of the war or the many unknown burial places of the victims of the massacre. A red hat -the chechia, echoes the classic Senegalese clothing. Inside the hat, a small hole allows for the growth of millet seeds, a staple food common to the tirailleurs. According to Anissa Touati, "Entering the room to the sound of the names of the absent, walking on the floor, is to confront history with its voids but it is also the responsibility to carry new narratives.
Beyond the archival and documentary aspect, the installation of Binta Diaw invites in poetic terms to a "memory of awakening" (Myriam Mihindou). From simple materials, accessible to all - earth and its symbolism linked to belonging, seeds, plants, hair, rolled flags - she creates immersive environments that are more like a narrative confronting contrasting materials, from the inanimate to the living with subtle touches of color.
The artist places a great deal of emphasis on the physical and sensory experience of the viewer, forcing them to re-instill in their memory the traces of a repressed past and to position themselves in front of their place of experience.
Her installations, often developing in an entire gallery space, as if she were taking "place" in a post-colonial and Eurocentric debate, contribute to highlighting the tension of belonging to two worlds. She draws on the resources of a collective unconscious past and contemporary that she shares and seeks to reactivate. "Her practice speaks of rebirth, accompaniment, and healing, with gentleness and elegance, drawing on nature, a return to nature, budding, voice, music, and community work" (Anissa Touati).
cur.Angéline Scherf
With the support of Cécile Fakhoury
