In the age of continuous information, social networks and a certain individualism, what does it mean to transmit? What’s the interpretation of this transmission? Of this gesture intended to entrust to another person a memory but also knowledge and know-how, traditions, rituals or even objects?
The plastic art proposals, whether they question or challenge, whether they are allegorical, poetic or committed, are at the heart of contemporary debates. What is forgotten and what remains is an exhibition that explores the notion of transmission through the works of eighteen artists from the African continent and its diasporas. Paintings, weavings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, and performances focus as much on exchanges as on cracks, on what is shared as on what is omitted, erased, made invisible and silent. To what is forgotten and to what remains.
The artist Hamedine Kane, in residency at the Cité internationale des arts, presents in this exhibition a series of his engraving works entitled Salesman of Revolt.
This work, a result of a collaboration during a residency in Bombay with the Indian artist Tejswini Sonawane, focuses on the impact of racial struggles in Western societies. This series of engraving works pays tribute to young street vendors carrying piles of books for sale on their heads in the markets of Dakar. Among these books, the artist selects those of James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates or Cheikh Anta Diop which question the consequences of racism and colonialism. These young sellers, most of them illiterate, carry like totems all the strength and historical weight of these works. Without necessarily knowing the content, they let themselves be guided, as if by intuition, by the cover chosen by the publishers. If the artist is as much interested in the titles as in their authors, he is also interested in the choice of the cover design, which he reproduces in engraving. Previously a librarian, Hamedine Kane brings together his two passions to invite us to question the power of words and images, of ideas and their circulation.
Hamedine Kane (Senegal & Mauritania) is recipient of the "Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts" residency program.