EL HADJI SY EXHIBITION GUIDE

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↑ Signature of El Hadji Sy / 1986 ink on paper Archive Axt/Sy 2

AT FIRST I THOUGHT I WAS DANCING 16.06 — 16.10.2016 EXHIBITION GUIDE Introduction p. — 5 Room descriptions p. — 8 Stepping out of the Aquarium.

Conversation of El Hadji Sy with Małgorzata Ludwisiak p. — 25 El Hadji Sy - Major exhibitions and actions p. — 32 List of works p. — 34 Programme of accompanying events p. — 37

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There are two equivalent entrances to the exhibition and the visit can be started from any of them. The room numbers have been applied only for the convenience of the viewer while using the guide.

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The exhibition of El Hadji Sy in the CCA Ujazdowski Castle is the first presentation of this Senegalese artist, curator and activist in Poland. He was born in Dakar in 1954 and became one of the crucial figures in the art scene of Western Africa after the countries from that region gained independence. Since the 1970s, he has been proposing pioneering, interdisciplinary action models that allowed him to test the field of art and the possible ways of using it. His numerous activities always seemed to balance on the edge between belonging and running away, in relation to the postcolonial heritage of Senegal, the concept of négritude, as well as local traditions, global markets or any other system, including those that internally regulate art itself.

El Hadji Sy does not paint, but rather “enters the painting” that has “entrances and exits”. Since the 1970s - that is, since the beginning of his artistic career - he literally enters the canvas.

By doing so, not only does he reject the figurative canon of visual arts imported from France by the Senegalese President Senghor and promoted, at that time, by École de Dakar, but also the entire Western tradition of painting based on the intellectual hand-eye relation. El Sy painted the canvas by kicking it and stepping on it, in order to “kick out” the colonial, Western cultural tradition by doing so. Instead, he opted for dance, movement and singing – the performative artistic environment natural for Senegal. This gesture of kicking turned into a signature of the artist.

In case of El Sy, negation and critique turn into a positive project. The artist initiated numerous art groups, bringing together artists and intellectuals; he also searched for hidden correspondences between different media, and for a new language of art that would change reality. He organised artistic festivals and took part in radical theatre experiments. Although he enjoyed the support and admiration of president Senghor, he also openly questioned the cultural policy of the state, creating bottom-up initiatives and structures together with other authors. In spite of the fact that his paintings were highly valued and presented internationally since the end of the 1970s, he was known for boycotting prestigious events, to which he had been invited. For example, he refused to participate in the famous exhibition Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the World), organised by the Centre Pompidou in 1989; or the Dakar Biennale in 1992 – although he had been engaged in several other editions – that year, to manifest his protest, he exhibited his works on the street. For years, together with the collectives co-created by him, he developed ephemeral events based on mutual relations 5

Kicking out Tradition, Footprinting Community

Introduction

and cooperation with local communities.

His cooperation with the mental hospital in Dakar, the organisation of workshops in small Senegalese villages or the co-creation of Village des Arts – an art village created as a grassroot initiative of the artists independent from the help of the state and even in opposition to it – all these activities show that the practice of El Sy consists in a socio-artistic project based on the community.

The artist is interested in co-creating communities and in stressing the processes that shape and transform them. It seems especially important in the context of Senegal, a young democratic state that had to – and still has to – face the challenge of colonial heritage, while at the same time searching for its own identity. Therefore, El Sy not only witnesses and comments on the transformations, but he takes an active part in them, proposing his own models for organising the world.

The exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle focuses precisely on the models proposed by the artist, on the specific cultural experience that contributed to their creation, and the possibilities of their universalisation. Over 100 paintings (including over a dozen works by Senegalese artists chosen by El Sy for this show), objects, posters and documenting materials (recordings of performances, photographs, manifestos, the “Metronome” magazine), as well as a performance prepared specifically for this exhibition will allow the audience to track the performative and processual models proposed by El Sy, together with the surprising role played in them by the body, the object and the global flow of people, goods and meanings. This is because the artist is interested in the process and not in a finished object - although his special choreography admits the creation of an object at a given moment. Nonetheless, the role of paintings or installations remains, to a certain degree, subordinate to the process. It is the process, with its subliminal musical and rhythmical structure, that radically transforms and warps reality. We may say that the process appropriates the objects in a way, in order to follow the current widened by them, flowing towards community and testing the limits of its agency.

The search for new organic relations between the body, the world, the objects and the materials, and translating them into the grammar of artistic practice form part of the process called “visual syntax”

by El Hadji Sy. He explains his method as a transformation of experiences into images through the artist’s body. The body works as a transformator that significantly changes the structures used by him. The visual syntax that we obtain as a result can save us from drowning in the excessive influx of images and meanings that we face every day; it gives us hope for becoming separate individuals within newly invented communities.

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AT FIRST I THOUGHT I WAS DANCING 1—8

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Sy during the performance like a backpack and borne by him like a cross. What is more, the form of this object corresponds with the Agadez cross – a symbol mentioned in many legends, originated from the tradition of the Tuareg from Sahara. Moreover, it appears in an almost identical graphic form on one of the posters advertising an exhibition

by El Sy. Interestingly, the artist has also noticed its resemblance to the horizontal section of the Ujazdowski Castle.

Performance is the natural environment for El Hadji Sy. The artist emphasises that he is not interested in finished objects – paintings or installations – but rather in the process. In his opinion, you have to “insert batteries” into every object, bring them to life and place them at the intersection of various processes. The actions of El Sy always make reference to the context he’s in at the moment - to his meetings with other artists and the audience.

Additionally, El Sy uses a geographical key and a game of associations depending on the cultural background of the viewer.

In accordance to the artist, the slave boat can evoke both the transport of slaves from Africa to South America, as well as the boats of contemporary immigrants; the figures of sportsmen can refer to the stadium located several hundred meters away from the Ujazdowski Castle, to the national sport of Brazil - football, as well as the contemporary European cult of a fit body; while the praying silhouette can refer to the pope John Paul II kissing the ground or to a praying Muslim. Forgotten stories, cultural context and economical dependencies at a global scale are linked together by the key of the material used by the artist. All of the works in the performance were made by El Sy of bags used to transport Brazilian coffee – grown by subsequent generations of African slaves and exported to Europe. The bags, marked with a stamp from Gdynia and the date – 10 Feb 2016 – were bought on an Internet auction for the purpose of the artist’s works.

The large format paintings made on jute bags instead of canvas and the objects sewn of them are jointly called Three Keys.

Together with the Slave Boat, they were created during the artistic residency of El Sy in the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in autumn 2015 and serve as the material for the performance entitled Three Keys. The artist’s experiences related with a month and a half stay in Warsaw were filtered through his memories from his recent trip to Brazil and through the cultural context of Senegal and, more widely, Africa.

The “keys” from the title open the performance and individual works on many different planes. In one of his interpretations, El Sy makes reference to Quran; and the graphic symbols used by him (a straight line, a bent line and a circle) are the keys indicating three possible attitudes of humans towards the world around them. And namely: the straight line means simplicity, the bent line symbolises openness to changes and activity, while the circle corresponds to being closed and unyielding. The painting-object with the symbols painted on it is worn by El

Additionally, El Sy plays a game with Eurocentric classifications related to the so called African art. Very often, the only association brought to mind by this category are some ethnographic exhibits covered with dust. Therefore, El Hadji Sy tailored a costume similar to the tunics worn by young boys in 8

Senegal during their initiation. The piece of cloth hanging on a provisional mannequin resembles an authentic exhibit, but its meaning becomes ambivalent: the tunic has never been used for an initiation ritual, it is not an authentic exhibit and it cannot be described with any of the terms from the specialised vocabulary of ethnographers.

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————————— Performance is the natural environment of El Hadji Sy. “I’m fascinated by the process and not by a finished object” – stresses the artist. The performance entitled Three Keys combines global histories, geographies and economies with the context of El Sy’s stay in Warsaw.

↑ Poster from El Hadji Sy’s solo exhibition, Gallery 39, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1993 Archive Axt/Sy 9

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Stories about Contemporary Art in Africa, → 8 curated by Clémentine Deliss, El Hadji Sy, Salah Hassan, Chika Okeke, David Koloane and Wanjiku Nyachae; and started with the recitation of the poetic manifesto of the group entitled Lula intéressé? (Is Lula Interested?). The politically engaged manifesto formed an integral part of the performance.

“A finished object as such is not interesting for me. I’m fascinated by the process” - says the artist. The film and photo documentation presented in the tower room presents the performative context of El Hadji Sy’s artistic practice. The images and objects created by him were often used in performances, and also created specifically for their needs.

They were also much more than just a stage setting – they became an important part of the process, actors of the spectacle in their own right. The records presented in this room show actions undertaken by the artist as part of the group Laboratoire AGIT’ART and the series of international workshops Tenq initiated by him.

Performance Mémoire Fracturée (Fractured Memory) of 1999, is a recording of a metaphorical journey of the artists from Laboratoire AGIT’ART, who managed to create a provisional art station called YangYang: a place for workshops, exhibitions and discussions about the relations between art and science, which operated for several days in the bar and in other spaces belonging to the Museum of Photography in Antwerp.

The slide show presents selected documentation of performative actions of the artist – both individual and as part of the groups Laboratoire AGIT’ART and Tenq.

The large format photo of El Hadji Sy and the photographic documentation present the performance Les cendres de Pierre Lods - Plekhanov 7 (The Ashes of Pierre Lods - Plekhanov 7), created by Laboratoire AGIT’ART in Théâtre de Verdure in the French Cultural Centre in Dakar, in 1990. This threehour-long, semi-improvised opera exceeded the boundaries of a spectacle and a performance, becoming a tribute to the late Pierre Lods, who died in 1989. He was a French anthropologist and painter, who came to Senegal in 1961 and was considered a co-founder of the École des Beaux-Arts in Dakar. He played an important role in the development of contemporary art in independent Senegal. → 4 El Hadji Sy prepared the stage design and the costumes for this performance, he also played in it.

More about the groups Laboratoire AGIT’ART and Tenq. → 7

→ Performance Plekhanov 7.

The Ashes of Pierre Lods Théâtre de Verdure, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1990 Photographer

Performance at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (1995) opened the show Seven

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————————— The pictures and objects created by El Sy were often used in performances, and also created specifically for their needs. They were also much more than just a stage setting – they became an important part of the process, actors of the spectacle in their own right. The records presented in this room show actions undertaken by the artist as part of the group Laboratoire AGIT’ART and the series of international workshops Tenq.

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the visitors, canvas spread on the floor or vertical, portable folding screen structures – force a specific choreography of the viewers who move their eyes and bodies, thus unconsciously becoming part of the performance that the exhibition has turned into. “I’m interested not only in the movement of the sight, but also the movement of the body” – says El Sy. Both the artist and the audience don’t need a translator in order to establish contact. This universal language, according to El Sy, is precisely his method of visual syntax, thanks to which we can – unlike in case of any other language – communicate directly.

“At first I thought I was dancing. Later I realised that I wasn’t dancing, but rather kicking. After that experience, the gesture of kicking became an important part of the general economy of my practice. My foot became my paintbrush that systematically leaves the traces of my body.” In 1975, El Hadji Sy created the first painting made of the traces of his footprints. By this choreographic gesture he not only rejected the figurative canon of visual arts imported from France by the President of independent Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor, and promoted, at that time, by École de Dakar.

Marine Archeology is a special kind of bodily record. This monumental work and the performance associated with it were created in São Paulo for the 31st Art Biennial in 2014. El Sy accepted the invitation to participate in the biennial under the condition that no materials would be brought from Africa to Brazil, and the entire work of art would be created on-location. In São Paulo, he retrieved, from the depths of the ocean, the memory and history of millions of African slaves that during several centuries were transported on ships from Western Africa (including the area of today’s Senegal) to South America. Only one tenth of them survived this journey. El Hadji Sy used fishing nets that he bought on-site in order to fish out from oblivion the dead bodies of those who did not survive. Both in São Paulo (2014) and later in Prague (2016) this work was accompanied by a performance of local dancers, whose spontaneous choreography without music, transformed this archeology into a living work of remembrance.

He also opposed the European tradition of classical painting that assumed a direct relation between the painter’s hand and the painting; which is why El Sy decided to use his entire body and, as a consequence, to step onto the painting. In traditional African cultures, it is precisely the body – movements, rhythms, dancing – what builds community, helps to heal or go through a transition (for example during initiation ceremonies or other rites of passage). El Sy stresses that the body is the crucial point of reference in every kind of art. He is interested in seeking organic relations with the body and the objects he creates. They always result from the process of “visual syntax”, the transformation of his experiences into images. He says that he “enters the painting” that has its entrances and exits.

The body of the viewer is also very important in this process. The manner of display of his paintings – as objects suspended in the air, kites hanging above the heads of 12

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↑ Screens / 2013 acrylic and tar on jute Photo: Wolfgang Gűnzel

————————— “I realised that I wasn’t dancing, but rather kicking. [...] the gesture of kicking became an important part of the general economy of my practice. My foot became my paintbrush that systematically leaves the traces of my body.” The body, movement and rhythm specify the choreography and politics of El Sy’s installation.

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Senghor, would sometimes openly question the cultural policy of the state, creating their own, bottom-up initiatives and structures together with other artists.

Professor Cheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist and Egyptologist educated in Paris, who in the 1950s and 1960s postulated that the Senegalese descended from ancient Egyptians. His theses provided an important point of reference for Senegalese intellectuals and politicians who created an independent state after 1960.

After his death in 1986, all his belongings were robbed, and this story became the topic of the performance and manifesto Mémoire fracturée (Fractured Memory), published by Laboratoire AGIT’ART in Antwerp in 1999. → 7

The painting Well permitted an impossible meeting of historical, imagined and symbolic figures, who would never be able to meet in real life.

The monumental, “unhumanly” huge portrait of the President Abdoulaye Wade resembles a mask. The snake eating its own tail serves as a frame for the painting-mirror, forcing everyone to look at their reflection. But instead of one’s own face, we see the creepy face of the third president of Senegal (in power from 2000–2012), who, among others, evaded responsibility for the tragic accident of the Joola ferry. The portrait of the president is painted on brittle parchment paper – like the one used, for example, in butcher’s shops – that was glued many times, in order to – as stresses El Hadji – obtain a „skin-like” surface.

Pierre Lods was the founder of the Poto-Poto School of Painting created in the suburbs of Brazzaville, Congo, in 1951. Later, he was invited by the president Léopold Sédar Senghor to give lectures and other classes in École des Beaux-Arts in Dakar; Pierre Lods, Papa Ibra Tall and Iba N’Diaye are considered to be its founders. → 2 In turn, the Tribute to Bocar Diong is the portrait of El Sy’s friend, a painter who died in 1989.

The person who looks him in the eye from the opposite direction is president Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal (1960–1980), a poet educated in Paris, one of the main initiators of the political and literary movement called Négritude. His goal consisted in finding values in the history and cultural heritage of the native peoples of Africa, and in creating a Pan-African community. Senghor came up with the idea of adding traditional techniques, such as pottery or tapestry, to the Academy of Fine Arts. He supported the development of art and believed that it played an important role in the creation of a new country. El Hadji Sy, in spite of enjoying the support and admiration of President

Next to the portraits of artists, intellectuals and politicians who were important for El Hadji Sy, we can also see the New Senegalese who represents the new generation of Senegalese women and tells us a lot about the social and economic processes that shaped it. When asked about the characteristics of contemporary Senegalese women, the artist responds: “they dress differently than my sister or my mother, they run businesses and speak English.”

The artist comments on this and other portraits that were painted on glass in the film Glass Letters (directed by Mamadou 14

Touré, 2013). He tells us about the Senegalese tradition of glass painting that is also applied by him. The technique called fixé was used both as a decoration for picture frames, as well as a cheap way to capture important figures and tales from the Quran, the saint men and charismatic religious leaders (Marabouts). According to El Sy, the value of this technique consists in the possibility of covering and uncovering meanings. The observation of the political situation in Senegal was the impulse that made him use glass and to learn the reverse technique – of an inverse painting cycle. In his hands, glass painting becomes a process that reveals “how from the invisible, from the shadows, we reach what’s visible, the light.”

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————————— The painting Well permitted an impossible meeting of historical, imagined and symbolic figures, who would never be able to meet in real life: the two first presidents of independent Senegal, intellectuals, artists and a contemporary Senegalese woman.

Portrait of the President / 2012 acrylic and tar on butcher’s paper Photo: Wolfgang Gűnzel 15

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known as the Southern Cross or the Sahara Cross) was supposed to indicate the four directions of the world and help nomads in their peregrinations. Each of the names of the 21 patterns of the cross that exist today, originates from the place where it was created: Agadez is a city in the central part of Niger, the seat of the former sultan. According to the legend, this is where a Tuareg warrior asked the blacksmith to craft a decorative item for his beloved, as a token of his love for her. In reality, this form of the cross is made of the signs: “+” and “O”: both of them present in the word “love” (tara) in the Tuareg language. This symbol appears in works by El Sy both as a graphic sign on the poster advertising his 1993 exhibition, and also as part of the installation Three keys and his performance under the same title (2015). → 1

El Hadji Sy looks for organic links between objects, people and the world. He evokes the interdependence of people with nature and reveals the transformations happening around us. He refers to his paintings as “forms clarified up to their own essence”, created as a result of processes similar to those happening in alchemy. Alchemy is also the title of a series of his works that makes reference to the five elements that are indispensable for life: water, fire, earth, air and sky; as well as to the way in which they interact.

Pierre Lods, a pedagogue highly valued by El Sy, used to say that his paintings touch “the cosmic scale”. The artist says that “the visible is, most of all, a manifestation of what’s invisible but manifests itself on the surface as colours, rhythms, life and content.” Rhythm and content are, in turn, properties of poetry, which – according to El Hadji Sy – is equal to pictures.

Painting – except for glass painting – did not exist in the traditional notion of art in Senegal. There is no word for “art” in the Wolof language: they use the word tar instead, which simply means “beauty”.

It is significant that in English the word tar refers to the black coal or wood derivative: a material often used by El Sy alternately with paints; he experiments with them like with some alchemy ingredients.

→ The painting entitled Agadez Cross refers to one out of many forms of the so called crosses, characteristic for the tradition of the Tuareg from Sahara. In accordance with one of the theories, the Agadez Cross (also

No. 13 Spirit of the Universe / 1981 oil on canvas Photo: Wolfgang Gűnzel 16

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————————— El Hadji Sy looks for organic links between objects, people and the world. He evokes the interdependence of people with nature and reveals the transformations happening around us. He refers to his paintings as “forms clarified up to their own essence”, created as a result of processes similar to those happening in alchemy.

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El Hadji Sy got involved in the international promotion of contemporary Senegalese artists. It became possible in the 1980s thanks to his friendship with Friedrich Axt (photo on the left wall). He met this German linguist, art lover and patron in 1979 in Dakar.

Since that moment, they worked together on the creation of the collection of contemporary Senegalese art for the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Main. Another result of this cooperation was the publication of the first anthology of Senegalese art scene and the organisation of many exhibitions of Senegalese art in Germany.

El Hadji Sy stresses that in African tradition the creation of art is a community-based process. “When you make something, the community takes part in this process.

It accepts the process. A work of art becomes a social object, expanded and enriched by the community that, in turn, finds in it its own reflection.” A vast majority of El Sy’s activities were based on, more or less formalised, artistic communities co-founded by him.

Their purpose often consisted in initiating processes that resulted in the creation of new communities: created by the artists, the audience and local communities.

For this show, El Hadji Sy selected paintings of several artists from the collection of the Frankfurt museum; choosing painters whom he particularly valued and whom he worked with in the first Village of Artists (and he still keeps working with some of them in the current Village des Arts). All of them, just like El Sy, belonged to the so called Dakar School, L’École de Dakar.

Village des Arts (Art Village) in Dakar is a bottom-up initiative of the artists, headed

by El Hadji Sy. The first Village des Arts was created in 1977 in a former military camp in Lat Dior, Dakar, in reaction to the unfulfilled promise to create an “art city” (Cité des Arts) by the first president of independent Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor. In 1983, about 70 artists were evicted from Village des Arts under the decision of the next president – Abdou Diouf 4 – and the studios they had lived and worked in were demolished by the military. The artists got organised again and, in 1996, they took over the abandoned barracks of Chinese workers (photo on the wall on the right), employed to build the National Stadium in Dakar. Today, it’s a crucial spot on the artistic map of Senegal. It is a place where El Hadji Sy and over 50 other artists have their studios, display their works and engage in artistic activities.

The policy of the president Senghor was a real breakthrough for the development of Senegalese art in the 1960s and 1970s. → 4 He promoted and supported the idea of a timeless, Pan-African art, that would be, in a way, complementary to European painting (and especially to modernism). In his opinion, African artists – independently from their country of origin – were guided by intuition and emotions. The meaning of their paintings should be read with one’s feelings, and not with one’s mind. They were also said to have used traditional, pre-colonial techniques – weaving, tapestry, pottery, glass painting – and formal patterns of European modernism. During the governance of president Senghor, the search for “African expression” in painting was the main idea for the professors of the Academy of Fine Arts created at that time, and for Paris-ed18

ucated Papa Ibra Tall and Pierre Lods, whom the president invited to cooperate. 4 This was the climate that accompanied the education of artists from the circle of École de Dakar.

They largely contributed to the development of contemporary Senegalese art, and moreover, since the 1970s, to the questioning of the role of contemporary artists in creating a new national soul and identity.

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Most of the works of Senegalese artists displayed at this exhibition were created in the 1980s. Their authors were gradually giving up their idealistic search for “Senegalese identity” and became interested in contemporary, syncretic tradition, including customs, holidays and beliefs from diverse native religions, Islam and Christianity. By selecting their works for the show, El Hadji Sy wanted to emphasise that he forms part of a certain artistic and cultural community.

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————————— El Hadji Sy stresses that in African tradition the creation of art is a community-based process. “When you make something, the community takes part in this process. It accepts the process. A work of art becomes a social object, expanded and enriched by the community that, in turn, finds in it its own reflection.”

Preparations for Tenq 96, Dakar / 1996 Photo: Mamadou Touré Behan

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participate in many openings of the Plekhanov performance, but was also responsible for designing their posters and set design.

In 1990, artists from Laboratoire AGIT’ART staged the performative play Plekhanov 7.

The Ashes of Pierre Lods in Galerie 39 in Dakar, in tribute to the memory of the artist and painting professor they valued highly. → 2, 4

El Hadji Sy joined the experimental group Laboratoire AGIT’ART (Laboratory of the Shock of Art) in 1974, when he was still studying. Among its founders were Issa Samb, a versatile artist and philosopher, Youssoupha Dione, a playwright, and Djibril Diop Mambéty, a film director and author of a non-conformist film Touki Bouki (1973).

The group based its actions on the contestation of rules that govern the world of art, on the escape from the discourse and space of museums, and on provocative links between various disciplines. The aim of their actions was not only to shake the art, but also to shake the reality, to cause a real change. In one of the performances, the artists engaged the staff and patients of a psychiatric hospital in Dakar, combining experimental theatre techniques with group therapy.

The Manifesto announced by Laboratory AGIT’ART in London in 1995 during the opening of the exhibition entitled Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa in the Whitechapel Gallery was presented at the beginning of a performance in which the members of the group express their condemnation of social inequality, forced migration and of the neglect of the weak by the state in the name of security policy.

In 1999, the members of the group create a performative station Yang-Yang in the Museum of Photography in Antwerp.

Through the language of art, they seek relations between art and science on a symbolic territory, whose name (Yang-Yang) refers to the former capital city of the ancient Jolof Empire. In the manifesto Fractured Memory they recollect the figure of an extraordinary Senegalese scientist Cheikh Anta Diop. → 4

The artists involved in the Laboratory distanced themselves from the apolitical and decorative art of the 1970s, represented by École de Dakar. → 6 For three decades, they were radically exploring the border between theatre and visual arts, repeatedly dealing with burning social and political issues, raised in public through manifestos – often idealistic and poetic in their form.

The manifesto Mémoire de Futur (The Memory of the Future), written by El Hadji Sy, Ass M’Bengue and Issa Samb in 1984, refers to their sharp observations of contemporary reality, including the political one. The figure that somehow used to patronize many actions of the Laboratory was Georgi Plekhanov, a founder of the social-democratic movement in the 19th century Russia and a political emigrant. El Hadji Sy not only used to

In 1980, in his studio in Village des Arts → 6, El Hadji Sy set up Tenq, not only an interdisciplinary place for projects and workshops, but also the first Senegalese contemporary art gallery. In the wolof language, the word tenq means ‘joint’, ‘connection’, and refers to experimental links between different kinds of art and to collective activities.

The collectivity included not only joint work of an international group of artists, but also meetings of artists with the audience, which was an essential objective of Tenq’s activity.

In 1990, El Sy together with Clémentine Del20

iss and other artists organized the africa95 workshops in Saint-Louis (under the aegis of the Royal Academy of Arts in London). It was one of the first international platforms of artistic exchange in Africa. In 1996, in Dakar, in response to a changed formula of the Dak’Art contemporary art biennale, artists from the Tenq group settled in an abandoned housing estate of Chinese construction workers in the Yoff district and organized there the next edition of the international Tenq 96 workshop (flags created during those workshops are presented at this exhibition). The area of the housing estate was permanently transformed into Village des Arts. → 6

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The Metronome magazine (its zero issue from 1996 can be viewed at the exhibition) was a forum of artistic exchange among artists, writers and philosophers gathered around Laboratoire AGIT’ART. Each number of Metronome had a collective authorship and the members that created it as well as the place of issue varied every time (i.e. Dakar, London, Berlin, Oslo, Tokyo). The person responsible for putting all the issues of the magazine together is its editor, curator and researcher, Clémentine Deliss, who often emphasized that Metronome is “a tool of interpretation and not a tool to promote artists”.

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space of the localities they lived in. In 1996, in the village of Hamdallaye, in the region of Casamance in Senegal, the artists taught art techniques to anyone that was interested (i.e. pottery, tailoring, traditional methods of colouring and painting fabrics), and together with the inhabitants they developed a graphic ‘alphabet’ that the latter used for decorating hand-made objects (ceramics, T-shirts) or houses. The group led to the creation of a cultural centre that operates until today. Art – or rather a creative attitude towards reality – has become a social determinant of identity, a link that brings the community together, and a way to earn a living. The economic and cultural principles of the village changed permanently. The effects and documentation of the workshops run in Hamdallaye were presented in 2002 at Dokumenta 11 in Kassel.

Another art collective co-founded by El Sy is called Huit Facettes (Eight Surfaces) and was established in 1995. The aim of their artistic actions was, according to the group members, to provide others with possibilities of transforming the world and, therefore, of actively confronting the issues they did not agree with: the political, economic and cultural situation. The eight artists from this group engaged mainly in artistic interventions involving city or village communities in art workshops organised in the public 21

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– prepared by Clémentine Deliss in close collaboration with the artists: El Hadji Sy, Salah Hassan, Chika Okeke, David Koloane and Wanjiku Nyachae – was one of the events accompanying the africa’95 festival organized under the aegis of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition had an essential influence in changing the colonial approach towards African art, until then associated mainly with the ethnographic perspective.

The collaboration of Deliss with Laboratoire AGIT’ART and El Sy as a co-curator resulted in a view “from the inside” on the works of sixty contemporary artists from various African countries displayed at that show. El Sy, as “a new anthropologist”, states that “it is not about being dark-skinned or making African art. I do not know what African art is. It is not possible to put African art into a suitcase, as it is not possible to do that with European art.”

“The baobab tree is a reservoir of memories”, says El Hadji Sy. “Before their journey to Brazil, African slaves used to go to the baobab tree and leave their memories there.” In a monumental installation Marine Archeology (its second part is in → 3, 4 and 5), created in 2014 for the 31st Biennale in São Paulo, the baobab became a figure of collective memory that creates and defines community. El Sy obtained a sixteen metre long fishing net directly from the fishermen of São Paulo; and created the shape of a baobab tree out of hessian sacks (made of jute) used to pack Brazilian coffee. The artist not only retrieves from oblivion the histories of more than thirty million anonymous slaves, but also represents them in a symbolic way with a huge baobab, a traditional African place of meetings and shelter for the ghosts of the ancestors. He combines these stories with the present time, establishing a network of relations between the inhabitants of Brazil and their ancestors, while commenting on the economic processes they got entangled in.

El Hadji Sy, as an archaeologist of memories, along with his works displays also the crates, in which the works of art were transported to the exhibition. At the same time, they serve as recordings of the journey of the artist, who watches the global flow of people, goods and meanings.

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The painting Seven Stories (1989) was featured as part of the Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa exhibition in 1995, in the Whitechapel Gallery in London; and in 1996 in the Malmö Konsthall. The exhibition

Nations’ Ball / 2010 acrylic and tar on butcher’s paper fot. Wolfgang Gűnzel 22

————————— The baobab tree is a reservoir of collective memories that create and define the community. The artist not only retrieves from oblivion the histories of more than thirty million anonymous slaves, representing them in a symbolic way with a huge baobab. He also combines these stories with the present time, commenting on the economic processes they got entangled in.

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← El Hadji Sy during the meeting Translating the present: between painting, performance, politics and ethnographic collections moderated

by Małgorzata Ludwisiak within the frames of the series Common Tasks Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle / 2015 Photo: Bartosz Górka 24

Some works of yours circulate around the notion of alchemy.

On the other hand, you speak a lot about visual syntax. What do these two notions mean to you?

Alchemy is the title of a series of my works and it refers to five elements – water, fire, soil, air and sky – which are like the five steps of life, they make life possible in the universe. And visual syntax is something different. It has to do with analogue images opposed to digital images. If you realize that we live in a globalized world that produces 10 million digital images per day and that it’s impossible to absorb them or make any use of them, and then the next day they are gone, then you ask yourself the question: what do I need more images for? Digital images have no human touch, they standardise the world. And on reverse – the images that come from the imagination have a certain rhythm; they are related to the energy that surrounds us. An artist is a mediator: he takes these images and translates them for different audiences in order to create a new perception, a new understanding of reality. A picture then, with its new grammar, acts as a creator of new views. The mediation of the artist is about bringing new human relationships or changing the existing ones. Art is not about originality, it’s about sincerity.

In the text El Hadji Sy and a quest for a post-negritude aesthetics 1, Prof. Mamadou Diouf describes you as a “rebellious” artist, a struggling one, trying to “shout out his anger”. How much of yourself do you identify with such an attitude?

I’m certainly interested in pushing boundaries, which is always difficult if they are not physical. Take the boundary between Mauretania and Senegal: to some extent it doesn’t exist, as it was artificially created, it’s not real. But much more serious are the boundaries that are invented to make people feel secure. Security… I hate this word! An artist is never secure and he can never be secure if he really wants to be an artist!

He should always stay outside of any boundaries, not be enclosed by them, but always remain open. The more open you are, the more you can relate yourself with the world. If you take the word “terrorist” and look for its etymology, you’ll notice that it means somebody who is defending the ground, terre.

In his defensive position, he’s closed to the relationship with the world. That’s why you need a visual syntax – for creating a new ability to see things, to produce new actions, new positions!

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1 M. Diouf, El Hadji Sy and the Quest for a Post-Négritude Aesthetics, [at:] El Hadji Sy. Painting, Performance, Politics, red. C. Deliss, Y. Mutumba, Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt 2015, p. 134–140.

Conversation with El Hadji Sy – Małgorzata Ludwisiak

Stepping out of the Aquarium

So this is the way of “shouting out anger”?

It’s about showing disagreement or agreement. I can yell and I can remain silent. The worst position is the one you take if you close your eyes, ignore something you don’t like. This is a position “in between”, a very secure one. When you are attacked by those millions of images coming from the media every day, they make you somehow unconscious, or rather not-conscious; they make you close your eyes. And the artist is someone who has to stay with his eyes wide open, he has to agree or disagree. He is like a sensor for the community and for this reason he sometimes has to be destructive to be constructive. That’s why painting for me is a way of activism. To some extent, it’s pretending to save the world from sinking.

A kind of political activism?

In a broader sense. If you look closely, you’ll see that all the “isms” are dying or will die soon: capitalism, Islamism, communism… What is coming is “tics”: informatics, robotics… The world of digital images is a new battle field. In a certain sense, my project is not a political project. I never wanted to be a member of anything; I never belonged to any political party. On the one hand, I want to watch what the state or the city produces. On the other hand, I receive energy from society. I’m a mediator. I’m in a process of projection from now to the future.

But still, already your decision to become an artist was kind of your first fight, first “political” gesture…

Yes, I come from a family of intellectuals - Senegalese middle class. My grandfather created a coranique university in Saint-Louis in the beginning of the 20th century and he taught there. My father was a clerk, my uncle – a ministry of security, my brothers are lawyers, architects, and teachers. My father wanted me to join the military! So when I announced my decision to go to an art school, it was a real fight in my life, with all the consequences. My parents refused to give me any financial support. I didn’t get any scholarships either, as I came from too wealthy family. So I started to design decorations for hotels, airports, hospitals or designing t-shirts. This way I earned some money to live. After I finished my studies, I never wanted to accept any grant from the state, in order to stay free, independent of any pressure of the system.

I also didn’t want to teach in the art academy.

I wanted to ask also about two persons who seem to be important to you: Prof. Cheikh Anta Diop and President Léopold Sédar Senghor. They presented two different ideological positions 26

towards the understanding of “africanity” and the idea of modern Senegal.

I considered Diop, with his ideas of “africanity”, a kind of icon for the whole continent. I even met him several times. Senghor was a product of France and I must admit, I had to fight against his ideas many times. We became friends only after he left politics and was no longer president. I must say I feel much closer to Diop.

If you remember the figure of mummy, which was an important part of Laboratoire’s perfomances, this is the idea of the Afronaut, which comes from Diop. Now we have passed from the Afronaut to the age of robotics.

Now I would like to ask you about the performative and transdisciplinary roots as well as environment of your painting. I feel there is some link to poetry in it – is that right?

To some extent painting is poetry. Images can be rhythmic, melodic; they are like poetry. I read poetry a lot and I also write it.

But I have never published any because I’m a painter, not a writer.

I don’t want people to be mistaken and say I’m a writer.

Your theatre experience seems to be crucial for your attitude towards art and painting. When did it start?

It was in the early 70s when I started to go to the theatres and to read French authors like [Antonin] Artaud or Roland Barthes, but also Brecht. I noticed then that theatre offered to society a kind of reversed mirror. But I must say that my first approach to theatre was through the body. In 1975 I started to design costumes for the National Theatre in Dakar, changing the traditional way of thinking about a costume or decoration. I became interested in how the roles were changing thanks to the theatre. And how much objects like a chair or a table are actors, not only people. I was also impressed by the meaning of silence in the theatre – silence can be very strong and much more eloquent than a word. Today television with its constant noise and flow of images killed the theatre.

In the same time you started to work with patients of a mental hospital.

Yes, it was because the relationship between art and therapy was very important for me from the beginning. I studied the art and writings of surrealists like André Breton or [Guillaume] Apollinaire, and I’ve learned a lot from them on the state of the human mind.

Society thinks that people go crazy because they lose their conscience. I wanted to know what this conscience is. What I needed was not sur-realism, something which is “above” conscience, but I needed to look for a kind of under-realism. That’s why I organized 27

an atelier with mentally ill people in a hospital in Dakar. You know, if you are crazy, you are sincere. These are the most sincere people in the world! They don’t have this double faculty of thinking one thing and saying the other. You also can’t pretend that you are crazy. I know because I tried it – but without success. So you can’t declare you are crazy and the same way you can’t declare you are an artist. In the hospital I’ve learned to be sincere.

How did the atelier work?

Well, to start it I went to meet the director, of course. After waiting for an hour or so, the door to his office opened. When I saw him, every single hair on my head stood up, because I saw the craziest man on the earth! After we talked, he said: ‘I like your project, come on Tuesday’. When I came, he assembled all the patients and said that I had to explain the project and see if they liked it. That was a moment of a real exercise – I had to convince all these people and get their acceptance. Then they started to tell me their stories, why they went crazy. In most cases, men became crazy because of women and vice versa: women because of men.

And that’s how we started to work together – each week for a few months. They were making paintings, sculptures, and interventions in the hospital. In the beginning I was asking myself the question of how you can transfer competence to someone who didn’t wait for it. But crazy people are so sincere that they could receive it.

It’s also because of the language of art itself, which is another kind of understanding, of communicating, of a love relationship.

Did it have anything to do with any interest of yours in psychoanalysis at that time?

I must say that I preferred Jung much more than Freud. One of his earlier books, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, was extremely inspirational for me, it really explained to me who I am. Because just after I finished my studies I was really questioning who I was.

He introduced me to the writer Wilhelm Reich and his The Sexual Revolution. On the other hand, if you ask me about alchemy, you must remember it comes from Jung! It’s important to establish your personal link to the cosmos and to God. The background of the radical group you belonged to – Laboratoire AGIT’ART – was to some extent spiritual, is that right?

To join the Laboratoire, you had to present your work, which had to be spiritual and experimental at the same time. What also counted was its processuality. That’s why, after many years, Laboratoire ceased to exist – because you can’t institutionalize an experiment! The main goal of the group was to criticize. When 28

I studied at the Academy, I never met a critical attitude there; for the professors everything was “nice”. And critique is something that puts you in a process, makes another discourse possible, giving you a stroboscopic view. And I’m speaking about another kind of critique than artistic critique. Once I used to paint red on red. Somebody criticized my painting in an “academic” way saying that it looked like blood. And I said that for me it was tomato!

And that’s it.

One of the main figures of the Laboratoire AGIT’ART performances was Georgi Plekhanov, a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and a political dissident. Why did you decide to choose him?

Because he was protesting, making agitation! Many artists, writers and thinkers were forbidden, censored or in jail during tsar times. Recalling Plekhanov in the performance titles was a kind of homage to the social engagement. Picasso once said: ‘If you are inside an aquarium, you can’t see its beauty’. So the aim of the Laboratoire was to go outside the aquarium, to see it from outside, from a new perspective, to analyse and criticize it. After that you can come back inside. Only this way you can change the inside situation. If you only stay inside, you make just theory.

What’s important, is the process. And you can’t stop the dynamic of the process. It just exists – or you co-create it or it will throw you into the ocean.

The other art groups you co-created also had the goal to provoke social change.

Tenq, which means “a joint” in Wolof [language], was a series of international workshops and a gallery. I wanted the artists to meet the public – that was the main goal. It started in 1980, when I transformed my studio in the first Village des Arts into a gallery space. It was the first gallery of contemporary art in Senegal! Of course there were some contemporary art initiatives in Senegal before, but they were organized by national institutes like the British Council or the French one which had their own goals. I had an idea of inviting artists for two weeks of intense residences in the Village des Arts and to end it up with multidisciplinary shows in open studios. There were no premises, no title, no curatorial frame – the main idea was just working together.

And what about the group Huit Facettes?

It started in the 90s with the invitation of 8 Senegalese artists to have an exhibition in Belgium. After that we decided to invite several Belgian artists, who made films or graphics, to come to 29

Senegal and work together. We didn’t want the workshop to take place in Dakar, we went to the south of Senegal, to the village of Hamdallaye. They had a Belgian agriculture project there, banana plantations, etc. So there existed the infrastructure for agriculture, but completely no infrastructure for culture. What we did was organise workshops for local people, made films with them, taught them how to make batiks; we established a radio station there and the architecture for culture events with solar lights. The best thing is that the whole structure was built by artists and the Hamdallaye people there. It still remains there until today and serves the local community! The cultural, economic and social landscape of the village changed also in a way that the local people learned how to make batik and the village is able to live from it. Before they had to travel elsewhere to buy one, now people from other villages come to buy it in Hamdallaye. After that we did a workshop in Joal, where Senghor was born. Again we brought international artists to work with us and with the local people. Together we built a well, canteen, and a structure for art residences. All of it also still functions today.

So you introduced a real change in the lives of this society!

Yes, and we did it together with them. It’s also important to remember that nor this group nor any other that I was involved in, has ever asked for governmental money. We wanted to be independent and we always raised the money ourselves. But never from the government. All these groups were involved in political activism, but it’s really sincere only when artists don’t help politicians, when they stay “insecure”.

And then the curators of dokumenta 11 in Kassel (2002) invited the group Huit Facettes with the presentation of the Hamdallaye project?

Actually, they wanted us to reconstruct the workshop of Hamdallaye a few years later. I didn’t like this idea, so I refused to go.

Instead, I offered my place to one local artist from Hamdallaye who substituted me. And he was so happy to go there; it was his first trip abroad! I went to dokumenta 10 with Clémentine Deliss to make a presentation of Village des Arts, but in general I don’t like biennales and these kinds of events. I much more prefer to produce the structure and not be absorbed by it.

Do you still work together as a group?

Well, one of us emigrated and another one died… But we still call ourselves Huit Facettes – Eight Facets – although we are no longer a group of eight. If there is an opportunity, it still happens that we work together.

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↑ El Hadji Sy with Małgorzata Ludwisiak in front of his studio in Village des Arts, Dakar / 2016 Photo: Mamadou Touré Behan

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BIOGRAPHICAL TIMELINE OF EL HADJI SY - MAJOR EXHIBITIONS AND ACTIONS

with a German linguist and patron of arts, Friedrich Axt, whom he will assist in the creation of a pioneering collection of contemporary Senegalese art for the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Main.

1980 – El Sy founds the first interdisciplinary gallery Tenq (from the Wolof language: ankle joint, link) in his studio in Village des Arts in Dakar.

1981 – El Sy works on the props and the visual design for the performative theatre play Plekhanov I staged by Laboratoire AGIT’ART. Further editions of Tenq, international art workshops. El Sy presents his first monographic exhibition at Paul Waggoner Gallery in Chicago and then in the French Institute in Abidjan.

09.09.1954 – El Hadji Moussa Babacar Sy (El Sy) is born in Dakar (Senegal).

1983 – artists from Village des Arts are evicted after the decision of the next president, Abdou Diouf, and the barracks they had lived and worked in – are demolished by the military.

El Sy becomes the co-curator (together with Pierre Lods) of a contemporary Senegalese painting and art exhibition (Regards croisés: Nouvelle peinture Sénégalaise) presented in chosen French cities (Lorient, Quimper, Fox, Brest, Marseilles – intentionally omitting Paris).

1973–1977 – he studies painting in École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Dakar.

1974 – he joins the experimental group Laboratoire AGIT’ART. The founders of this group include: Issa Samb – a versatile artist and philosopher, Youssoupha Dione – a dramaturge, and Djibril Diop Mambéty – a film director. The group carries out an art project in the Pasteur Mental Hospital in Dakar, engaging the staff and the patients in this action.

1984 – artists from Laboratoire AGIT’ART publish the manifesto entitled Mémoire de Future (Memory of the Future). El Sy opens Galerie Sédar in Dakar (on the Ngor Island) together with Pierre Lods.

1975 – El Sy develops his practice of “entering the painting”: he rejects the hand-eye relation for the sake of painting with his feet. His works are presented in Musée Dynamique in Dakar during the Third Salon of Senegalese Artists.

1986–1987 – El Sy is the co-author and curator of shows 6 Künstler aus Senegal (6 Artists from Senegal) in Bonn, Stuttgart and Saarbrücken. He takes part in the exhibition Art against Apartheid organised in Dakar, he also opens a monographic show in Musée Dynamique (1987).

1977 – the artists open the first Village des Arts in a former military camp Lat Dior in Dakar. The “village” of artists was created in reaction to the unfulfilled promise to create an “art city” (Cité des Arts) by the first president of independent Senegal - Léopold Sédar Senghor.

1989 – El Sy boycotts the participation in Salon des Artistes, whose organisation has been overtaken by the Senegalese government. He is appointed Secretary General of MECEN’ART 89 and he pres-

1979 – exhibition of paintings by El Sy and sculptures by Guibril André Diop in Galerie 39 at the French Institute in Dakar. El Sy gets acquainted

ents his works once more in Galerie 39 in Dakar.

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1990 – artists from Laboratoire AGIT’ART stage a performative play entitled Plekhanov 7. Les cendres de Pierre Lods (The Ashes of Pierre Lods) in Galerie 39 in Dakar, dedicated to the memory of that artist and painting professor.

the artists from Laboratoire AGIT’ART, who present their manifesto Mémoire Fracturée, demanding the reopening of Laboratoire Carbone 14 in Dakar.

2000–2001 – artistic residencies in Washington (Howard University / Museum of African Art) and Vienna (Portfolio Kunst AG).

1992–1993 – El Sy boycotts the prestigious Dakar Art Biennale and chooses to display his works on the street.

2002 – the documentation of performative artistic actions carried out together with local communities in Senegal by the Huit Facettes group is presented at Dokumenta 11 in Kassel.

1994 – at the request of the Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour, El Sy designs and paints kites for the video clip of the song Chimes of Freedom.

Together with Clémentine Deliss and Anna Kindersley, El Sy organises the workshops africa95, known as Tenq 29, in Saint-Louis, Senegal.

2004 – El Sy works on the visual identification for the space of the Linguére hospital in Senegal.

2014 – 31st São Paulo Biennial – El Sy created his Marine Archeology and a performance, engaging a group of Brazilian dancers to work with him.

1995 – exhibition of works by El Sy at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg (South Africa).

Performative actions with the Huit Facettes collective co-founded by El Hadji Sy in Turnhout.

El Sy takes part in the show Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa in the Whitechapel Gallery in London (in 1996 in Malmö Konsthall) curated by Clémentine Deliss. Creation of the manifesto Lula intéressé? (Is Lula Interested?) and a performance

by Laboratoire AGIT’ART.

2015.03–2015.10 – retrospective exhibition El Hadji Sy. Painting Performance Politics in the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Mein.

2015.10-11 – El Sy stays at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw within the framework of the art residency programme Artists in Residence (A-I-R Laboratory). He works on objects for his performance created on the basis of his experiences in Warsaw. He cooperates with the artists Małgorzata Lisiecka and Justyna Wencel (in 2016 - Iwona Teodorczuk-Możdżyńska), and a Senegalese culture animator, Mamadou Diouf.

1996 – artists from the Huit Facettes collective organise art workshops in Hamdallaye, a village in the Casamance region (Senegal). In response to the Biennale 1996, members of the Tenq group take over an abandoned settlement of Chinese construction workers in the Yoff district in Dakar, where they organise workshops and formulate the Tenq 96 manifesto. Clémentine Deliss publishes the first issue of the “Metronome” magazine.

Village des Arts remains active until today: it is a place where El Sy and over 70 other artists live, have their studios and engage in artistic activities.

2016.02–2016.05 – the second edition of the retrospective show El Hadji Sy. Painting, Performance, Politics takes place in the National Gallery Prague, Czech Republic.

16.06–16.10.2016 – exhibition El Hadji Sy. At First I Thought I Was Dancing in the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw.

1999 – El Sy receives the National Order of the Lion from the President of the Republic of Senegal, Abdou Diouf. The Museum of Photography in Antwerp hosts the Station Yang-Yang prepared by 33

1 Documentation of the performance Three Keys CCA Ujazdowski Castle / 16 June 2016 Performers: El Hadji Sy, Mamadou Diouf, Małgorzata Lisiecka, Iwona TeodorczukMożdżyńska Door to Infinity / (1995), 2016 acrylic on jute Poster from El Hadji Sy solo exhibition, Gallery 39, French Cultural Institute in Dakar, 1993 Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Self-Portrait No. III / 1980 acrylic and wax on jute 57 x 79 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Slave Boat / 2015 acrylic on jute 474 x 143 cm Courtesy of the Artist Work created during El Hadji Sy artistic residence at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 10-11.2015 Three Keys / 2015 acrylic on jute 237 x 227 cm / 251 x 190 cm / 190 x 250 cm / 192 x 206 cm Courtesy of the Artist Work created during El Hadji Sy artistic residence at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 10-11.2015 Untitled / 2015 acrylic on jute Courtesy of the Artist Work created during El Hadji Sy artistic residence at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, 10-11.2015

2 Janice McLaren SOS Culture Laboratoire AGIT’ART, performance at the Whitechapel Gallery in London / 1995 DVD, 33 min.

Courtesy of Clémentine Deliss Laboratoire AGIT’ART, performance Mémoire fracture / Fractured Memory Laboratorium, Museum of Photography, Anvers / 1999 during exhibition curated

by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Barbara Vanderlinden

production: Antwerp Open and Roomade DVD, 40:55 min.

Courtesy of ZKM Karlsruhe

4 Blue Man / 2013 oil on canvas 90 x 80 cm Courtesy of the Artist

Performance Plekhanov 7.

The Ashes of Pierre Lods Théâtre de Verdure, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1990 Photographer unknown Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Boatmen / 2011 oil on canvas 100 x 40 cm x 6 Courtesy of the Artist

Set design and invitation card for performance Plekhanov 7.

The Ashes of Pierre Lods Théâtre de Verdure, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1990 Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum

Double Portrait, Girl and Man / 2013 acrylic on canvas 35 x 26 cm x 2 Courtesy of Makhète Wade Fetus / 1987 oil on canvas 100 x 79 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

3 Face Fragment / 2010 acrylic on canvas, mirror, wood 200 x 75 cm Courtesy of the Artist

Léopold Sédar Senghor / 2013 reverse glass painting 78 x 64 cm Courtesy of Mamadou Touré Behan

Marine Archeology performance, the National Gallery Prague / 5 February 2016 Production: Centre for Choreographic Development SE.S.TA in collaboration with the National Gallery Prague DVD, 14 min.

Courtesy of the National Gallery Prague

Mamadou Touré Behan Glass Letters / 2013 DVD, 13:51 min.

Courtesy of Mamadou Touré Behan Mother and Child / 1987 acrylic on canvas 120 x 90 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Power and Fertility, Weaver, Wrestler, Sitting Man, Moon, Dakar, Woman (screens) / 2013 acrylic and tar on jute 420 x 60 cm, 214 x 52 cm, 230 x 49 cm, 210 x 64 cm, 189 x 80 cm, 195 x 80 cm, 223 x 65 cm, Courtesy of the Artist

Pierre Lods / 2013 reverse glass painting 59 x 50 cm Courtesy of the Artist Portrait of a Moor / 2010 acrylic on canvas 58 x 37.5 Courtesy of the Artist

SLIDEDSHOW: El Hadji Sy at work. Documentation of Laboratoire AGIT’ART performances, Tenq 94 workshops and Village des Arts Dakar 1990-1994, São Paulo 2014, Saint-Louis 1994 Photos: Clémentine Deliss, Wolfgang Gűnzel, Daniel Lie, Djibril Sy, Mamadou Touré Behan

Portrait of the President / 2012 acrylic and tar on butcher’s paper 190 x 200 cm Courtesy of the Artist

3-4-5 Marine Archeology / 2014 cord and acrylic on canvas 16 x 1.2 m Courtesy of the Artist

The Well / 2014 acrylic and tar on jute 275 x 245 cm Courtesy of the Artist

Professor Cheikh Anta Diop / 2013 oil on canvas 90 x 80 cm Courtesy of the Artist

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Untitled / 1986 acrylic on paper 65 x 50 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Untitled / 1986 acrylic on paper 65 x 50 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Untitled / 1991 acrylic on jute 178 x 169 cm Private collection Untitled / 1991 acrylic on jute 220 x 207 cm Courtesy of Jean Loup Pivin Untitled / 2000 print Private collection The New Senegalese / 2013 reverse glass painting 68 x 53 cm Courtesy of Baidy Agne The Turbaned Woman / 2013 reverse glass painting 68 x 53 cm Courtesy of Baidy Agne Tribute to Bocar Diong / 1984 acrylic on canvas 98 x 70 cm Private collection, Frankfurt am Main Woman / 1989 oil on canvas 92 x 76 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

5 Agadez Cross, 2014 mixed technique, acrylic and tar on canvas 40 x 50 cm x 5 Courtesy of the Artist Alchemy / 2011 acrylic and tar on canvas 130 x 80 cm x 6 Courtesy of the Artist Coranic Slate / 1994 acrylic on jute 220 x 102 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Declination of the Dream / 2004

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Grasshopper / 1989 oil on canvas 100 x 72 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Alexis N’Gom Noah’s Ark / 1987 reverse glass painting 33 x 48 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

No. 13 Spirit of the Universe / 1981 oil on canvas 95 x 111 cm Courtesy of Kadist Art Foundation, Paris

Boubacar Coulibaly (Couloubaly) Ready for the Sacrifice Feast / 1982 gouache on cardboard 50 x 65 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Snake Charmer / 1984 oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Spiral Coincidence /1984 oil on canvas 107 x 128 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Tann (Vulture) / 1991 acrylic on canvas 81 x 75 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main The Key / 2013 acrylic and tar on canvas 100 x 75 cm Courtesy of the Artist The Lexicon / 1998 acrylic on jute 150 x 210 cm Courtesy of Baidy Agne The Rising Sun - Bird with a Human Head / 1989 acrylic on canvas 60 x 50 cm Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main The Wardrobe / 1994 acrylic and tar on jute 240 x 200 cm Courtesy of Abdourahim Agne Untitled / 1994 acrylic on tarpaulin 340 x 218.5 cm Private collection Vegetal Ancestry / 1995 acrylic on jute Private collection Vegetal Ancestry / 2013 acrylic and tar on jute 150 x 100 cm Courtesy of the Artist

Museum, Frankfurt am Main Sérigne N’Diaye City / 1983 reverse glass painting 35.5 x 24 cm x 2 Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Souleymane Keita Untitled / design for tapestry / 1975 gouache on cardboard 49.3 x 39 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Souleymane Keita Rain of Mangoes / 1984 acrylic on cardboard 75 x 106 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Chérif Thiam Wagon Trip / 1986 akwarela na papierze 55 x 75 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Théodor Diouf Nocturne / 1985 acrylic on cardboard 93 x 74cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

M. Sall Bad Woman / 1987 33.8 x 48 cm reverse glass painting Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

El Hadji Sy and Friedrich Axt, Senegal / circa 1984 Photographer unknown Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum

Mohamadou M’Baye The Power of Sign / 1986 oil on paper 50 x 64.5 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Chinese Workers’ Camp (later Village des Arts) Dakar / 1996 Photo: Clémentine Deliss

Mor Faye Apartheid / 1983 gouache on cardboard 50 x 64.5 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Preparations for Tenq 96, Dakar / 1996 Photo: Mamadou Touré Behan Storage unit, Chinese Workers’ Camp Dakar / 1996 Photo: Clémentine Deliss

Ouma Katta Diallo Genie / 1987 acrylic on canvas 128 x 96 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Tenq 96. Dakar / 1996 Photos: Clémentine Deliss, Mamadou Touré Behan

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Ousmane Faye The Rider / 1987 75 x 98 cm oil on canvas Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Tenq workshop, Saint-Louis Courtesy of Clémentine Deliss Lula intéressé? Manifesto of the Laboratoire AGIT’ART Metronome No. 0, Dakar published and edited by Clémentine Deliss Printed in Dakar / 1996

Philipe Sène Pangolin by Day with the Family / 1988 gouache on paper 48.5 x 61 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Memory of the Future, Manifesto of the Laboratoire AGIT’ART Ass M’Bengue, Issa Samb, El Hadji Sy / Dakar, 1984 Archive Axt/Sy

Sérigne Mbaye (Khalif Guène) Touki No. 2 / 1984 gouache on cardboard 20 x 18 cm Courtesy of Weltkulturen 35

List of works

oil on canvas 65 x 50 cm x 2 Courtesy of the Artist

Metronome No. 0 published and edited by Clémentine Deliss printed in Dakar / 1996 Photos on pages 41-42, Anthony Olivier, Picnic, Hoxton Square, London 1995 Courtesy of Clémentine Deliss Photos from El Hadji Sy exhibitions, Laboratoire AGIT’ART performances Dakar, Saint-Louis, Johannesburg / 1984–1995 Archive Axt/Sy Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photos from the visit of artists from Huit Facettes group in Hamdallaye Photos: Mamadou Touré Behan Poster from the performance Plekhanov 7. – Ashes of Pierre Lods Laboratoire AGIT’ART, Théâtre de Verdure, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1990 Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main Poster from the performance Plekhanov – Memory of the Future Laboratoire AGIT’ART, Théâtre de Verdure, Centre Culturel Français, Dakar / 1984 Poster from Tenq workshops / 1994 Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Marine Archeology / 2014 acrylic and rope on coffee bags and fishing nets Courtesy of the Artist Mask / 1995 acrylic on jute 167 x 108 x 56 cm Courtesy of Bassam Chaitou Nations’ Ball / 2010 acrylic and tar on butcher’s paper 130 x 90 cm Courtesy of the Artist People / 2010 oil on jute 55 x 75 cm x 4 Courtesy of the Artist Rearview Mirror / 2013 chalk and tar on canvas 90 x 100 cm Courtesy of the Artist Return of the Warrior / 2013 acrylic and tar on canvas 132 x 70 cm x 3 Courtesy of the Artist Seven Stories / 1989 oil on canvas 75 x 60 cm Courtesy of Baidy Agne The Warrior / 2011 tar on canvas 97 x 52 cm x 2 Courtesy of the Artist Wrestlers / 2013 acrylic on canvas 180 x 60 cm x 2 Courtesy of the Artist

The Anvers Manifesto / Laboratoire AGIT’ART / 1999 Archive Axt/Sy Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

KITES Mermaid, The woman dancer, Cowrie shell / 1993 Drums, Coranic slate acrylic on silk with fibreglass 500 x 150 cm Courtesy of Silvia and Patrick Nassogne

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Cases in which the works of El Hadji Sy were brought to the exhibition

List of works

Courtesy of Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Bag / 1995 acrylic on jute 161 x 111 x 50 cm Courtesy of Bassam Chaitou Cataract / 2014 acrylic and tar on butcher’s paper 60 x 180 cm x 2 Courtesy of Baidy Agne Marine Archeology / 2014 pencil and string on paper 60 x 167 cm Courtesy of the Artist

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ACCOMPANYING EVENTS alysing, on the one hand, art strategies that are parallel to those of El Sy, such as collectivism or transdisciplinary forms of expression, and on the other hand, art institutions and festivals viewed from a non-Western perspective. Experts from many fields of humanities, curators and artists will participate in these international debates.

For the dates and details of specific events, please refer to the Ujazdowski Castle website and our Facebook page.

PERFORMANCE THREE KEYS The performance features El Hadji Sy and other artists invited to cooperate with him, and will take place during the opening and closing of the exhibition. The performance and the artworks were created during the artistic residency of El Sy in the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in autumn 2015.

MEMEOPERA – Transformation | City | Traveller The Memeopera is an experiment combining contemporary music and the new media; a piece composed by Marta Śniady will be created on the basis of a libretto of Internet memes made by young people. The meme topics will refer to the ideas present in the art of El Sy and those specified during the competition – transformation, city and traveller.

The premiere of the Memeopera will take place in the Ujazdowski Castle on the 17th of September, as part of the International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn.

GUIDED EXHIBITION TOURS – Art from the Perspective...

El Hadji Sy (18 June, in English), Małgorzata Ludwisiak and Karolina Marcinkowska.

LECTURES / MEETINGS / CONFERENCES CYCLE OF LECTURES – The Travelling Pop-Cultural Notions in Africa Four meetings about African pop culture: fashion; science fiction and comic books; cinema industry/Nollywood; and music/new sounds. The lectures and presentations will be given by experts invited by the cycle’s curator, Konrad Schiller. The first meeting: Key Word: Fashion. Emancipation of Identity, 29 June.

WORKSHOPS FOR KIDS, ADULTS AND FAMILIES Plein air events around the Memeopera Collective creation of stage setting objects for the opera spectacle – the Memeopera – open for everyone willing to participate.

Event for youth and adults.

Africa Unmasked / Event for adults What can we say about the multiple meanings of such notions like “history”, “art” or “tradition”? What escapes the rigid, Euro-

CONFERENCE – From Collectivism to the Critique of Modernity During the last weekend of the exhibition (14–15 October), we will be discussing and an37

centric categories and tourism brochures?

The topic of workshops conducted by Karolina Marcinkowska – anthropologist and the creator of Africa Remix initiative – will be the cosmopolitan and syncretic dimension of African cultures, as well as the sources and specificity of the art of selected contemporary African artists.

FILM PROGRAMME (starting in September) Author’s review of Senegalese documentaries The presented films about contemporary social, economic and cultural phenomena in Senegal have been selected by Fatou Kande Senghor, an artist, founder of Waru Studio Productions and author of films: In Conversation with El Hadji Sy and Giving Birth, awarded at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

The programme also includes, among others: Market Imaginery (directed by Joanna Grabski) – an exceptional documentary about Colobane – a huge street market in Dakar, accompanied by a discussion with Janek Simon and Joanna Sokołowska.

The Boat / Event for youth and adults Workshops by Mamadou Diouf, culture animator and musician The boat, one of the elements of the work Three Keys by El Sy, will serve as an excuse to talk about multiculturalism, the possibility of coexistence of cultures and religions, and the economic, cultural and social consequences of migrations, not only in Africa.

New Cinematographies A cycle of film projections and lectures devoted to the cinema as a tool of power, but also as a medium allowing us to create autonomous languages. We will have a look at the birth of new national cinematographies, for instance: in Senegal, Samoa or Jamaica; and the political and social phenomena reflected in them.

We will also focus on cultural policies and the neo-colonial practices of former empires that are associated with them.

Curator: Michał Matuszewski.

How Do You Imagine Africa? / Event for children and parents A guided exhibition tour for families with kids, combined with interactive and performative activities connected with chosen objects from the show. Conducted by: Mamadou Diouf.

Kiddovisions / Event for children and parents Summer Saturday workshops, meetings and concerts for children aged 0-3 and 4-8 and their parents.

Admission to all the workshops is free of charge. Information and registration: edukacja@csw.art.pl

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El Hadji Sy. At First I Thought I Was Dancing EXHIBITION / 16 June – 16 October 2016

EXHIBITION GUIDE Introduction: Małgorzata Ludwisiak

Exhibition Curators: Małgorzata Ludwisiak, El Hadji Sy

Texts, artist’s biographical note: Karolina Marcinkowska

Curators’ and Artist’s Assistant: Karolina Marcinkowska Production coordination: Olga Kozińska

Substantive proofreading: Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Karolina Marcinkowska, Olga Byrska

Exhibition design: Krzysztof Skoczylas

Graphic design: Jakub Stępień / Hakobo

Graphic design: Jakub Stępień / Hakobo

Project Coordinator: Olga Kozińska

Translations: Karolina Marcinkowska

Editorial coordination: Grzegorz Borkowski, Sabina Winkler-Sokołowska

Promotion and Media Relations: Agnieszka Dąbrowska, Alicja Latkowska, Olga Byrska

Linguistic review: Jan Koźbiel

Coordination of voluntary services: Joanna Tabaka

Translations: Agnes Dudek, Karolina Marcinkowska, Bogumiła Piętak, Piotr Szmeja

Educational programme: Anna Kierkosz, Iga Fijałkowska, Joanna Rentowska, Joanna Tabaka

Photographs of works: Clémentine Deliss, Wolfgang Gűnzel, Bartosz Górka, Daniel Lie, Djibril Sy, Mamadou Touré Behan

Lectures and debates: Konrad Schiller

Printed by ARGRAF, Warszawa

Film programme: Fatoumata Kadou Senghor, Michał Matuszewski

ISBN: 978-83-65240-22-4

Performers: Mamadou Diouf, Małgorzata Lisiecka, Iwona Teodorczuk-Możdżyńska, Justyna Wencel

© Publisher: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw, Poland ww.csw.art.pl

Exhibition production team: Tomasz Mościcki (Head), Waldemar Brański, Adam Bubel, Maciej Dębek, Wojciech Kędzior, Marek Morawiec, Bartosz Pawłowski, Artur Skrzypczak, Grzegorz Gajewski, Paweł Słowik

Partners:

Exhibition inventory: Barbara Sokołowska Exhibition maintenance: Karolina Nowicka The exhibition is a continuation of the El Hadji Sy. Painting, Performance, Politics project, thought up by Clémentine Deliss, PhD.

Media patrons:

Artists: El Hadji Sy and Laboratoire AGIT’ART, Tenq, Huit Facettes, Souleymane Keita, Mohamadou M’Baye, Philipe Sène, Chérif Thiam, Sérigne Mbaye (Khalif Guèye), Mor Faye, Oumar Katta Diallo, Boubacar Coulibaly (Couloubaly), Théodor Diouf, Ousmane Faye, Alexis N’Gom, M. Sall Project partners: Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main; The National Gallery in Prague Special thanks to: El Hadji Sy, Clémentine Deliss, PhD, and Mamadou Touré Behan.

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eng.

EXHIBITION GUIDE

el hadji sy AT FIRST I THOUGHT I WAS DANCING 40