“La Vie Des Noires” by Serigne Ndiaye Cissy, at Plage Soumbédioune (pronounced Soom-bay-djune)
By Robin Riskin
Nestled in the crook of Plage Soumbédioune, set behind the thumping music of the Magic Land amusement park, lies another “magic land” for the creatively curious. A motley sculpture garden of recycled materials, “La Vie Des Noires” (“The Lives of Africans”) is a fantastical installation by Serigne Ndiaye Cissy.
A discarded boombox transforms into a handbag accessory through Cissy’s work of recuperation.
The works represent the lives of African people and peoples, made out of items Cissy has found on the beach. Branches fastened with plastics, fabrics, and metals embody tribes from across the continent. Tombstones of gathered rocks commemorate Senegalese artists and leaders. Under Cissy’s hand, objects as mundane as a water bottle and as outrageous as a painted cow skull transform into a kooky but rich homage to African lives, histories, and cultures.
Visitors can enter “La Vie des Noires” by any of the five portals.
“La Vie des Noires” is no static structure, but a living, moving mechanism. Since Cissy created the work in 2000, he adjusts details every day. At any given time, if he’s not resting in his “tiki-chateau,” he may be found moving the Mali tribe over to the Gambia crowd, or perhaps adding to the frock of “La Femme Africaine.” This June, not long after the site was included in the Dak’Art Biennale, Cissy sensed bad spirits in the vicinity and burned the work to the ground, only to rebuild the formation from scratch.
Visitors can enter “La Vie des Noires” by any of the five portals and receive Cissy’s free personal tour. Don’t mind that the seat he offers is missing a back – a cushion of newspapers adds padding. By nightfall, Cissy lays out a blanket, and guests can soak in “La Vie des Noires” under the glimmering light of the moon.
The inspiration for the work comes from Cissy’s father, who used to make scare crows out of discarded objects to keep animals off their property. Cissy’s own found object-sculptures evoke trendy recycled material art such as Romauld Hazoumé’s bucket-gallon masks and Calixte Dakpogan’s recuperated plastic creatures. Yet Cissy applies the mixed media aesthetics to the form and function a site-specific environmental installation. He reinvents space, reforms landscape, and presents a constantly evolving site for interaction. In “La Vie does Noires,” rich legacies of culture and knowledge intersect with contemporary forms of representation to produce a work that is at once deeply historical, experimentally alternative, and fabulously cosmopolitan. Continue reading
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