Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present Et je renais à la terre qui fut ma mère [And I was reborn to the land that was my mother], an exhibition by Senegalese artist Souleymane Keïta (1947 - 2014) conceived in close collaboration with the Collection Jom - Dakar.
Et je renais à la terre qui fut ma mère borrows its title from a poem by Léopold Sédar Senghor whom the artist loved to read. The exhibition is an invitation to immerse oneself in Souleymane Keïta's particular universe and to (re)discover, through the prism of painting, his atypical career, which began a decade after Senegal's independence and was marked by several aesthetic periods that can be read as the artist's responses to the issues of his time. Ten years after his death, the poetic scope of Souleymane Keïta's work still resonates strongly today, as it embodies a singular facet of the so-called Senegalese moderns (1960 - 1980).
The chronology of the artist's career acts as a discreet thread running through the exhibition. It allows visitors to immerse themselves in the various moments of the artist's creativity. The exhibition begins with his connection to the first generation of the École de Dakar after his graduation from the Beaux-Arts at the end of the 1960s, where Souleymane Keïta's figurative, colorful works mainly depict scenes of everyday life, in direct dialogue with Senghor's negritude movement, which sought to develop the aesthetic tenets of an African art (Femme noire and later, Intérieur). Then, around 1975, after a first trip to Mali in 1974, Souleymane Keïta moved back to Gorée island and turned away from the figuration of the “Dakar style”. From then on, the artist devoted himself to an increasingly abstract approach (Composition I and Composition II).
Souleymane Keïta's travels also play a crucial role in his inspiration: his discovery of Mali, the country of his paternal ancestors. Then came New York, where from 1980 to 1985, Souleymane Keïta spent time with the modern Afro-American scene, with artists such as Bill Hutson, Melvin Edwards and Ed Clark, with whom he shared for a time his quest for a fair representation of complex identities - African for him, Afro-American for them. He then painted the important series Voyage au Mali - New York.
Souleymane Keïta eventually returned to Senegal. His resettlement in Gorée from 1985 to 1995 was a transitional phase in which the artist experimented with a variety of pictorial techniques, deeply influenced by the American abstract expressionist movement and the richness of the surrounding nature (Pleine Lune à Gorée, Full Moon, Études des Sardines).
From 1995 onwards, Souleymane Keïta left the island of Gorée and settled in Dakar, where he developed a number of emblematic series, such as Chemises du Chasseurs and Scarifications,which gradually took on objects and fabrics in homage to the Mandingo culture of his origins.
The last two decades of his life were devoted to perfecting the Synthesis of the finest visual moments in his quest for sensory abstraction, giving shape to dark, powerful works in which the making of the world is played out.
This chronological line, however important it may be for understanding Souleymane Keïta's work, cannot eclipse the symphony of the artist's great oeuvre. Discoveries can also be made freely through the eye-catching details of the canvases, flashes of light in the dark ether of pigments and constellations of scattered, concealed objects. There are so many resonances between eras, between works, that they too are the bewitching guide to this exhibition.
As part of the Et je renais à la terre qui fut ma mère exhibition, Éditions Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to launch a Dakar preview of the monographic work Souleymane Keïta (avril 2024).
