Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present Dègg naa tuuti Wolof à Dakar, a solo exhibition by Adji Dieye.
For her first monographic presentation at the gallery in Dakar, Adji Dieye pursues her reflection on the complex foundations of the archival principle, focusing in particular on Senegal's national archives and their link to architecture and urban development since the post-independence period. The artist questions our understanding of archives and their role in shaping identity narratives and representations. Frequently using irony, Adji Dieye questions the supposed status of the archive as the sole guarantor of objective historical truth.
At the heart of the exhibition is a series of architectural installations characteristic of the artist's practice. Through them, Adji Dieye deconstructs the principle of a linear reading of history as often practiced by knowledge-holding institutions, a reading that tends to overlook the very contexts and ideologies that imposed it. The artist's metal structures, refined echoes of the skylines of the world's great urban centers, are traversed by the taut flow of silk screen-printed urban images taken from Senegal's national archives and from images belonging to the artist's personal archive. The exercise of deciphering images and the uncertainty about the nature of the images we are looking at help to challenge our perception of narratives about development and supposed architectural modernity.
With Dègg naa tuuti Wolof [I understand a little Wolof], Adji Dieye also delves deeper into how the economic actions of certain communities and social classes have an impact on the construction and transformation of public spaces. In a new series of black-and-white silkscreen prints and drawings, she captures the everyday gestures that inhabit and define these spaces. Her drawings, imbued with the precision of her photographic sensibility, are both intimate and critical reflections on the lives of Dakar's expatriate communities. Playing on the tension between deep local ties and the influences of foreign customs, she reveals spaces where subtle exchanges and multiple identities can emerge. The apparent hedonism of these lifestyles, often made possible by the maintenance of economic conditions superior to the realities of the host country, generates practices and uses of common space that contribute to its profound modification. Conversely, the new ways in which these social spaces operate are themselves likely to give rise to other ways of perceiving oneself as a social subject in an economic and political space.
Ousmane Sembene's cinematic exploration of the social landscape of Dakar, ten years after independence, is a key reference in Dieye's work. Sembene's observations on Western migration and the paradoxes of modernity are a central theme in the artist's practice, which explores the persistent impact of these historical dynamics.
Drawing also on Felwine Sarr's ideas in Afrotopia, according to which “culture shapes perceptions, attitudes, consumption habits and individual and collective choices, while remaining an essential economic driver”, Adji Dieye seeks here to show how neoliberal frameworks can subtly distort the notion of self-determination.
Complementing the exhibition, Maguette Dieng Cortés, from the Jokko collective, presents a sound installation based on recordings of personal interactions, often marked by difficulties in communicating in Wolof. This work transforms the recorded material into a powerful meditation on Dakar's vibrant cultural identity and its ongoing interactions with a globalized world.
