“They have levelled it. They have taken away the forest.”
In Kassou Seydou’s native Casamance, the most secret and vital form of education takes place in the forest.
A dense forest, made up of vegetation and water. It holds ancestral knowledge, dangers and liberations, beings and things which together point to something: a significance, or a direction to follow.
Only those who venture into the forest can access its knowledge.
Enter.
The lines of writing that Kassou Seydou inscribes in his paintings are the lines of our destinies. In search of the lost meaning, carried away by the levelling of the land, they have given shape to beings that have broken free from the canvas to inhabit a three-dimensional world — here, for the very first time.
As an act of repair.
Of the forest.
Of the meaning hidden within it.
Of the destinies that take root there.
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury and Sokhamon are pleased to present Lu Nëbtu, a solo exhibition by Kassou Seydou.
For this site-specific project, Kassou Seydou extends his pictorial universe into the exhibition space, giving rise to a forest made up of his paintings and installations.
Lu Nëbtu, meaning “that which is hidden” in Wolof, echoes the meaning held by the forest in the artist’s native Casamance, embodying a form of resistance against the levelling of a contemporary world severed from its roots.
Curated by: Galerie Cécile Fakhoury and Margaux SCHRAMM DECROIX for Sokhamon.
