Imagined Realities for the Digital City

Babacar Traoré DOLI, “La Renaissance Trotoire” (The Sidewalk Renaissance)

By Robin Riskin

Babacar Traoré Doli’s whimsical creations are born out of photographs onto which he digitally paints stories from his imagination. The works bear witness to urban street life and transform the ordinary into super-realities, blending pointillism, realism, and the abstract. Imagine the thick graphic figures of Romare Bearden played against the whorls of Klimt with the graphic edge of a New York City subway map, all set over serious journalistic photography.

Doli’s unique form of photo-painting is rooted in personal experiences from his hometown of Dakar, yet relevant to a universal sense of urbanity. The works open up possibilities for expression and map out new forms of documentation for the digital age.

Doli, who comes from a family full of artists and creative thinkers, counts among his uncles the sculptors Moussa Traoré, Ali Traoré, and his homonym Babacar Traoré. Doli’s late father Mamadou Traoré was Cultural Advisor to the last President of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade and worked with the former President Leopold Senghor. Traoré housed a kind of bohemian artist residency-cum-mosque in the late last century. Doli, a Dak’Art Biennale veteran, finds himself among a group of fresh and innovative young artists on the verge of bursting onto an international art scene.

Babacar Traoré DOLI, “La Récreation” and “Les Journaliers”

“La Récreation” and “Les Journaliers”

Two works capture contrasting moments of innocence and desperation, one of schoolchildren on break; the other, “les talibes,” street children who have to beg in order to pay the Marabou school fees. The difference of social positions and arbitrary nature of destiny are highlighted by the remarkable similarity of images. Digital strokes painted onto the photographs evoke a futuristic sense of time and suggest the aesthetics of Islamic traditions.

Babacar Traoré DOLI, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

“Ne Me Quitte Pas”

An homage to the disappearing culture of old Medina, a fast gentrifying quartier of Dakar. While buildings are being torn down and residents asked to move out of their homes, “Anarchie Sponsorisée” immortalizes the neighborhood’s history and captures its warmth with strands of colored light beads.

Babacar Traoré DOLI
“L’Arrivée” (The Arrival), “L’Attente” (The Wait), “L’Intermediare” (The Intermediary), “Le Départ” (The Departure)

“L’Arrivée” (The Arrival), “L’Attente” (The Wait), “L’Intermediare” (The Intermediary), “Le Départ” (The Departure)

The four-part series bears witness to an unexpected exchange that highlights a web of interlocked relationships. A man waits; a boy approaches wheeling an old lady; the boy receives money from the man for the woman; the two wheel away, their needs satisfied. The series documents the rising and falling emotions of the characters, and in a deeper sense, questions the relationship between historicism and voyeurism. For behind the images of the transient interaction is one missing character: the photographer, who captured the events from a balcony above.

Babacar Traoré DOLI, “La Renaissance Trotoire” (The Sidewalk Renaissance)

“La Renaissance Trotoire” (The Sidewalk Renaissance)

Construction workers discover a renaissance bursting beneath the city streets in the imaginative photographic narrative. The red-shirted man and blue-pantsed companion pry open the sidewalk with a pick and shovel to find a colorful city exploding under the surface. The story suggests the potential for a creative future that lies hidden within reach.