Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present FAITES-NOUS CONFIANCE (Trust us), a solo exhibition by Adji Dieye.
FAITES-NOUS CONFIANCE, these are the ironic words with which Adji Dieye invites us to enter the gallery space where a landscape of metal and fabric structures created for the exhibition unfolds. Large sections of silk, sometimes black and sometimes white, drape them in studied movements and give us the impression of seeing a great architecture in development unfolding before our eyes.
As we approach, we discover a set of images of West African buildings printed on the silk with rather modernist, sometimes futuristic lines, geometric cubes, standing here and there; palm trees and large roads that finally give us the feeling that these buildings could be present in any part of the contemporary world. « The Africa of tomorrow ». These images are in fact images of models and 3D simulations of buildings that do not exist.
For several years, Adji Dieye has been patiently collecting these images of construction projects posted in Dakar, Senegal, as they are built. Between progressive ambitions and smoke and mirrors, these images bear witness to the complex links between development and the affirmation of identities in post-independence West Africa.
For several years now, Adji Dieye has been developing the project Culture Lost and Learned By Heart, in which she questions the foundations of the notion of archives, notably through the iconographic collection of the National Archives of Senegal in Dakar. Through this, she is questioning the apparent neutrality of the contents of the archives and the way in which the past is narrated in order to highlight the intrinsic violence of the archiving process.
During her research, the artist noted the omnipresence of buildings that embodied the colonial power's vision of development in the country. A few decades later, the images gleaned by the artist also seem to be able to enter into a process of archiving, as their production reveals new contemporary issues. Who are the promoters of these modern buildings? How does their construction respond to contemporary issues? What do they say about the relationship to the land? To history?
The injunction FAITES-NOUS CONFIANCE is asserted here in all its paradox, reminding those who would like to forget that the manufacture of the narratives of the liberal capitalist and neocolonial world never ceases to hide behind a deceptive appearance of neutrality.
