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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
The Legacy of the Dakar artworld
| Panel |
40. Contemporary African Art: A Rhetoric of Change
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| Paper ID | 17 |
| Author(s) |
Lintig, Bettina Von
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | This paper examines the legacy of the ideology of Negritude in the
contemporary Senegalese art world. Ever since its emergence under the
leadership of Senegal's first President Senghor, Senegalese art has
expressed the ideals of Negritude. This paper situates the positions of
contemporary artists against this legacy. For instance, the activities of
the Laboratoire Agit Art could be understood as a reaction to art criticism
based on Senghor's ideas, in particular his Cartesian opposition of the
intellectual versus the emotional. Senghor's concepts were imposed by a
cultural policy that was resisted by Agit-Art artists.
In this paper I want to argue that Agit-Art did not succeed in destroying
Senghor's ideas which are still around in Dakar's art world today. Artists
still use certain N�gritude terms to describe their works and it can be
assumed that they are reflective about these concepts. I try to demonstrate
how artists with an international reputation like Viye Diba, Ousmane Sow, Issa Samb, members of the Huit Facettes, Iba Ndiaye, Souleymane Keita, Gabriel Kemzo and others use these N�gritude
terms even today. They provide an idiom for a local art criticism.
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