Under Viyé Diba’s Brown Bonnet

By Robin Riskin

A brown bonnet cap and gentle smile bedeck Viyé Diba, one of the forefathers of contemporary art in Senegal. Rich canvases and multi-media installations cover the walls of his airy whitewashed home. The upper floor is a sunlit cove of Diba originals.

Viyé Diba, who spearheaded a movement of abstract art in Senegal.

Diba’s mystical abstract artworks are rooted in sensibilities of movement, rhythm, and spirituality that speak to a global nation. The canvases mix hues of reds, browns, and grays with bits of rope, plastic, toile, and other materials. Wooden beams guide the movement, while disfigurations texture the backdrop.

“Matières et Sentiments” (Materials and Feelings), 1996, detail

Diba uses local and recycled materials found in the environments he depicts. Rather than signing with his name, he marks each work with a patch of faded color. The sense of geometry, gravity, and horizontality in his art stems from his interest in dance, which he describes as the most potent form of human expression. More recently, Diba has experimented with plastics, consumerist products, and spacious installations, such as his works for the past several Dak’Art Biennales, and for the 2011 Tang Museum exhibition, “Environment and the Object” at Skidmore College.

“Le Langage” (The Language), 2001, detail

Although strong in math and science, Diba decided to attend Ecole des Beaux Arts (now Ecole Nationale des Arts) in order to make a living as an art teacher. When he won a scholarship to study in France, he discovered art as not just a profession but a passion. He wrote a dissertation for his Ph.D in urban studies that compared the city of Nice, France to that of Dakar. Diba has spearheaded a movement of abstract art in Senegal; exhibited in the likes of Johannesburg, Paris, and Washington; and served as the President of the National Senegalese Association of Visual Artists. He is interested in questions of people and space, urban environments, and social aesthetics. He uses art as a strategy to analyze history, represent society, and imagine solutions for the future.

Viyé Diba stands before “Matières et Sentiments” (Materials and Feelings), 1996

“Matières et Sentiments” (Materials and Feelings), 1996
Each piece of the seven-panel installation links to its neighbor through a rope and alternating mallet or pocket. Subtle vertical lines pull the motion downward to meet strips of canvas tied into thick bows. Ruddy brown tones emphasize a bond with the Earth, while the weight at the bottom delineates the pull of gravity. The works capture a relationship between space, form and human sentiment. The yearning for connection reflects Diba’s interest in communication that extends beyond the vocal.

“Robinet” (Faucet), 2010

“Robinet” (Faucet), 2010
Frustrated by a Chinese-imported faucet that he had to replace seven times, Diba traced out and replicated the faucet’s contour until it covered an entire canvas. The gray shapes fill the frame under a gauze of toile, and become visible through a window-like sliver of cellophane. On top of the window is written “421,” the total number of faucets in the frame. With a pristine geometric abstraction, the piece demonstrates the repetition of wastefulness in the 21st century routine.

The Other ‘Magic Land’ of Dakar

“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.