The Event as a Privileged Medium by Maska Ljubljana

from the official venue, while they were among those who had fought for this forum of international interaction.27 Still, in 2010, several artists expressed their dissatisfaction with this situation and declared that the biennial was a totally useless institution for their own artistic endeavours and international standing.28 From 1996 on, the developments of the biennial space, however, were accompanied by other activities. Artists started exhibiting their works in public spaces in Dakar, be it in newly founded galleries, at international cultural centres, at seats of enterprise, private houses, etc. These fundamentally personal activities furthered another institutional development. In 2000, these exhibitions were united in the so-called Dak’Art “OFF” space, which became an extremely important space in the landscape of Dak’Art (see below).

The Structure of Dak’Art An organisational specificity of Dak’Art is the production of various exhibition spaces, or what has been known since 2000 as Dak’Art “IN”. The main field is the “International Exhibition”, subsumed to selection by the selection committee, at the Musée Théodore Monod in the Musée de l’IFAN complex. Artists selected for this space are subject to the allocation of prizes. The two most important ones are: (a) the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor (in former editions, the Grand Prix du Chef de l’État), offered by the President of the Republic of Senegal; and (b) the Prix du Ministère de la Culture du Sénégal. More prizes are awarded by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and other international institutions. Another space is the “Solo Exhibitions”, which are under the responsibility of particular curators. This international space allows for presenting works of art of artists who have no citizenship of an African country. In 2010, it was dedicated to “Présence Haïtienne”, an exhibition of four Haitian artists in the Galerie Nationale d’Art. Another space is the Salon du design, which is dedicated to applied arts of African designers. The most important prize in this field is the Prix de la Créativité. This space, however, was suspended in 2010 – it is subject to evaluation of its purpose and what its scope should be. Furthermore, the official programme includes a zone of debate, the “recontres professionelles” in the village de la biennale in the garden of the Musée de l’IFAN complex. These are series of talks by specialists (such as 27 Konaté, 2009, 63f; interviews in 2008 and 2010. 28 Interviews May 2010.

118 THE EVENT AS A PRIVILEGED MEDIUM IN THE CONTEMPORARY ART WORLD

Youma Fall, “Prospects for Dak’Art” (Fall 2010)), discussions with members of the selection committee on their criteria and selection procedures, round tables (in 2010, on “aesthetic and territory”), etc. As mentioned earlier, under the label Dak’Art “OFF”, the Biennale Secretariat, in particular the artist Mauro Petroni, coordinates exhibition activities during the course of the Biennale in different spaces in Dakar. The Secretariat’s role fundamentally consists in producing a guide des exposants as an orientation for interested audiences to all of the art events. Artists from anywhere, gallery owners, cultural centres (French, German, etc.), the village des arts (now next to the “Stade Léopold Sédar Senghor”) and other local institutions participating in the “OFF” platform are invited to give information about the times and locations of their interventions as well as their duration – such events may take place for just an evening, for a few days or throughout the whole course of the Biennale, i.e. a month. Beginning with only a few events between 1996 and 2000 (sixteen to fifty), the number of these exhibitions improved drastically in the following years – to well more than a hundred after 2002, reaching nearly two hundred in 2010 – while the official exhibition of Dak’Art “IN” remains largely restricted – eighty-four artists selected in 2004, thirty-eight in 2008, and twenty-six in 2010 – mostly due to financial shortcomings. Some professionals of the global art world have criticized that there are too many of these interventions, in particular having a huge scale of differences in quality. This has been acknowledged by the coordinators of the “OFF” and by other officials of the Biennale. On the one hand, there is the field of high quality: invited artists from abroad, local artists in the “OFF” who are well known internationally, gallery owners who prepare their exhibits with much care and often two years in advance, or prominent international curators who may be invited to conceive shows. A large intervention by Ndary Lo, winner of the “Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor” (2002 and 2008) was shown, for instance, at the seat of the French transnational corporation Eiffage in 2010. On the other hand, the “OFF” gives visibility to artists of lesser international and more local standing, with a huge variety of art styles and genres within this field. This mix conveys in this space a particular horizon and ambiance, and definitely an important popular dimension. According to the local organisers, it by all means must be retained. In fact, there are indirect se-