Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present Diallo Diery, the solo exhibition of photographer Eva Diallo in Dakar, Senegal.
Eva Diallo's photographic work is rooted in the history of a territory from which it radiates: northern Senegal and the Fouta region from which the artist's family originates. The region is crossed by the Senegal River and characterized by semi-desert landscapes. It is in the Dieri or Diery, an area of dry cultivation farther from the river and a pastoral area for the Peuhl shepherds and their herds that the artist's family has settled for several generations. The expression "Diallo Diery" which gives the exhibition its title has become the common name for the Peuhl populations of the region whose existence unfolds at the crossroads of tradition and modernity.
The photographs of the series "Diallo Diery" taken by Eva Diallo between 2018 and today constitute a long term set, a work in progress that expands with the life and visits of the artist. Immersed in the heart of her family, Eva Diallo captures moments in between, these visual latencies where something unspeakable is played out in the rush of everyday life. She photographs her loved ones in open moments to which the nuances of a melancholic gaze irresistibly cling: the preparation of a meal, an improvised children's game, the ritual of tea; a collection of fleeting fragments repeated a thousand times and always regretted. Often, the characters are deliberately isolated in their frame - central elements of a refined composition. Everything, however, suggests the essence of a tightly knit community life.
In Eva Diallo's work, the understanding of things is done smoothly, little by little, like a visual language that is only perfected through practice. From one work to another, a network of meanings is woven in the background of the images. The artist constructs them in such a way that they force one to pause. The abstract compositions (the sunset, the sheep's skinny back on the sand) are not so easily readable and must be deciphered. Close-ups (the kiwi, the embroidered cloth) require a step back that is not only literal: both the eye and the mind must take a step aside to understand the depth of the image and not be tempted to project their preconceived readings onto it.
In Chapter V of her Bolol series, Eva Diallo is also concerned with distancing. The artist begins this series in 2019 with the idea of tracing the migration routes taken by two of her cousins in 2010 and 2016 from Senegal to Italy and France. Bolol is conceived as a chapter, like a visual diary. To the complex question of how to represent clandestine migration without falling into its clichés, voyeurism, pathos or moralization, Eva Diallo chooses to move to the edge. The narration of the whole passes by an aesthetic of the anecdote and the fragment. The details that the artist captures during her travels are fundamental in the sensitive understanding of migration issues. They avoid direct confrontation with the subject while strongly evoking the complexity of the experience lived by those who decide to leave.
The seven photographs of aerial landscapes that make up this final chapter correspond to the seven days of the week during which one of the artist's cousins was lost in the Aïre massif in Niger, at the entrance to the Libyan desert. Getting Lost is the first chapter of Bolol without any human figure. It questions the notion of distance and its perception for the viewer. The reintroduction of landscapes reminiscent of topographic maps responds to the need to represent the immensity of the journey and its geographical incongruity1. The path undertaken is so colossal, both spatially and humanly, that the mind struggles to imagine it. By flying over the immensity of these countries, Eva Diallo reconnects us with the physical reality of this migration and indirectly with its sensitive reality as well: what can one feel when one leaves, motivated by the hope of a better life, and finds oneself lost in the desert for seven days?
Diallo Diery and Bolol: Chapter V confronts us with the challenges of a visual narrative at the crossroads of art and photojournalism. Eva Diallo's images are sensitive images that require time to be decoded and apprehended in the complexity of their structure and resonance. She calls us to transfigure the trivial into a rich network of meaning at the crossroads of the intimate, the historical and the contemporary.
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1. The journey begins in Senegal and continues respectively in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Libya before reaching the coast of Italy.
