Opening & Artist Talk: "United Colors of Africa: Environments" - Momar Seck

Event Image

Add To Calendar

RSVP HERE

Festival des Cinq Continents 2023: Found in Translation

La Maison Française of NYU is delighted to announce the 5th edition of the Festival des Cinq Continents, organized in partnership with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. We are excited to welcome the public back for an incredible week of programs from April 17th-22nd under the theme "Found in Translation." Join us for a rich tapestry of interwoven events with celebrated Francophone artists in visual arts (Momar Seck), music (Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba, Marilyn Nonken), poetry (Sylvie Kandé, Isabelle Balot), theatre (Mamadou Mahmoud N'Dongo), and a conference on Women's Mobilization in Francophone Africa.  Find the full program and links to register here. Events are free and open to all!

***

La Maison Française de NYU a le plaisir d'annoncer la 5ème édition du Festival des Cinq Continents, organisé en partenariat avec l'Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Nous sommes ravi.e.s d'accueillir le public pour une semaine de programmes exceptionnels du 17 au 22 avril, sous le thème "Found in Translation." Venez découvrir une tapisserie riche d'événements proposés autour d'artistes francophones issu.e.s de disciplines variées: arts visuels (Momar Seck), musique (Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba, Marilyn Nonken), poésie (Sylvie Kandé, Isabelle Balot), théâtre (Mamadou Mahmoud N'Dongo) et une conférence sur les Mobilisations des Femmes en Afrique Francophone. Retrouvez le programme complet et les liens d'inscription ici. Les événements sont gratuits et ouverts à tou.t.e.s. 

Exhibition opening & Artist talk: United colors of Africa: environments, Momar Seck

**This event will take place in English**

Open to all in person, register HERE.

Join us to kick off this edition of the Festival des Cinq Continents with the opening of Momar Seck's first solo show in NYC: "United Colors of Africa: Environments." The artist will be in conversation with Rosalind Fredericks, Associate Professor of Geography and Development Studies at Gallatin (NYU).

The exhibition will be on view from April 17th to 21st at La Maison Française.

Artist statement: 

"In my works, the notions of social unity, the bonding of human communities, the overcoming of material conditions and the reorientation of visions of the world return like "leitmotivs". Color, even if I do not theorize it, opens up new possibilities, new organizations of space thanks to the tropical sun of Senegal. What is discarded in the form of waste, even rejected, comes to transform our gaze. An object of everyday consumption, even when it arrives at an advanced state of deterioration, allows me to open another world, relegating instinctive consumerism and the poverty of the initial materials to the background.

In my pictorial practice, I associate textiles bearing African signs and symbols with accessories and materials found elsewhere, for example in Switzerland (paintings, pastels, etc.) as a modality of union between the two poles of my life, Africa. and Europe. My concerns in visual arts go hand in hand with my convictions and my social vision. Thus the recovery of textiles, which has its own history according to the society from which it comes, makes it possible to establish a dialogue between peoples and cultures. The pieces of fabric glued to each other express the desire for self-change and exchanges with others, the desire for union and cohesion.

My work reflects a rooting in the essential values ​​of Africa. In front of these heterogeneous objects, I see a moment of escape where we are transported into a world of fraternity. Order and disorder, rigor and spontaneity, dream and reality, place the works in a permanent evolution." - Momar Seck

About the artist

Momar Seck
seck

Visual artist, painter and sculptor, Momar Seck is a citizen of the world and a transmitter of knowledge.

A graduate of the Ecole Nationale des arts in Dakar in 1994, he received a scholarship from the Swiss Federal Commission for Culture for the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. He obtained a doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Strasbourg in 2012. Momar Seck earned many awards including the UNESCO Prize for the promotion of visual arts.

Originally from Senegal and Switzerland, Momar Seck taught for thirty years in Switzerland, including ten years as head of the Arts and Design department at the International School of Geneva. After this long stay in Europe, he decided to return to Senegal in 2022 to contribute to the cultural development of his country. He explains his artistic approach in his book Art africain contemporain, ma démarche en partage (Baobab Edition).

Passionate about transmission, he organizes residencies for Swiss and French artists in Senegal and offers training opportunities and fruitful exchanges to young Senegalese artists and young Swiss and international students.

He tries to raise awareness by working on the themes of the environment, the intercultural, identity and permanent existential questions. His reflection focuses mainly on the use of recycled materials and objects.

Momar exhibits regularly in Europe and Senegal, he has participated in exhibitions in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland (Palais des Nations, Rath Museum in Geneva, Kunsthalle in Bern), the United States, and Cuba among others.

In May 2022 he participated in the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar at the Senegal pavilion at the Museum of Black Civilizations. Currently his exhibition “Environnement 2.0” is on display at the contemporary art space Ngala in Zurich until March 15, 2023.

About the moderator

Rosalind Fredericks
fredericks

Rosalind Fredericks's research and teaching interests are centered on development, urbanism, and political ecology in Africa. As an urban geographer, her research brings together discard studies, critical infrastructure studies, and feminist political ecology in examining the politics of waste work and discard infrastructures in Dakar, Senegal.  Her book manuscript, Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal (Duke University Press, September 2018) was awarded the Toyin Falola Book Award for the best book in African Studies by the Association of Global South Studies.

Her current research project, supported by a major grant from the National Science Foundation, examines planning and activism surrounding recycling labor at the city's dump Mbeubeuss. With funding from a Green Grant from the NYU Office of Sustainability, she is collaborating with the NGO WIEGO to produce a documentary film about the politics of closing Mbeubeuss. Fredericks's research has won major funding support from the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, and the National Science Foundation, and she was NYU's Stephen Charney Vladeck Junior Faculty Fellow for 2015-2016. After completing her Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, Fredericks was a postdoctoral research scholar with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. At Columbia, she taught with the Institute for African Studies and organized The World and Africa event series for the Committee on Global Thought.

Fredericks has edited two books with Mamadou Diouf on citizenship in African cities: Les Arts de la Citoyenneté au Sénégal: Espaces Contestés et Civilités Urbaines (Editions Karthala, 2013) and The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). Fredericks is the co-director (with Robin Nagle) of the Discard Studies Collaborative at NYU and co-organizer of the Discard Studies Conference to be held at Gallatin in September 2022.