Da qui (from here) is Binta Diaw's first solo show in Paris and her third solo exhibition in collaboration with Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, following Abidjan (2021) and Dakar (2022).
In Binta Diaw's research, the body is at the intersection of historical and social issues. While the black body and the female body are particularly marked by the weight of history, the artist makes them her medium, performative and reconciling, irrigating a whole-world necessary to collectively face contemporary challenges. Curves-landscapes, braids-roots and sculptures-rivages illustrate the strategies of resilience shared by the body and nature in the face of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy.
Uati's Wisdom, made up of a sprawling network of braids, evokes the mythological figure of Mami Wata, an aquatic divinity often portrayed as seductive and dangerous, and represented in Africa and India with an impressive head of hair. In Binta Diaw's work, braiding is both a motif and a method: the hair culture of black women, past and present, reflects a wide range of historical and societal issues. Braiding also means binding, unifying, caring for and passing on. Alone or accompanied by other women, Binta Diaw activates her works thanks to this gesture that requires patience and expertise.
When she created the video Essere Corpo, Binta Diaw sought to reconstruct and maintain a continuity between the body and nature, in a sensitive dance. It was driven by this same instinct that she created Terrestre, Continuità and Radici Sospese in Milan, works that reveal the genesis of her work, made up of performances and installation-ecosystems that encourage us to look at and understand the issues of our recent history through a different prism.
Italian and Senegalese, Binta Diaw grew up in Milan and studied at the Brera Academy. Italian culture is an integral part of her identity and the artistic fusion of her work. Their economy of means and conceptual and visual openness are reminiscent of Arte Povera. What's more, in Rifùgio, Binta Diaw explicitly cites the igloo that is emblematic of Mario Merz's research, and brings to life braids of synthetic hair that, in this space of refuge, tell a story of resistance and resilience.
Winner of the Pujade-Lauraine Prize in 2022, nominated for the Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize in 2023 and the MAXXI Bulgari Prize in 2023, and currently in residence at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris thanks to support from the Art Explora foundation, Binta Diaw showed her work as part of Paysages, a solo exhibition at the Magasin in Grenoble in 2022.
A monographic catalogue has been published to coincide with the exhibition, with contributions by Françoise Vergès, Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, Marie-Hélène Pereira and Delphine Lopez.
