Fine Arts

2024. The story of a young, unmarried couple in Dakar, oscillating between day and night, the private and public, loving and hiding away, intimacy and distance. 

Alternating and raising dichotomies between proximity and distance, longing and love, hiding and being watched, emotional and physical intimacy, this series is inspired by the film and photos of “In the Mood for Love” by Wong Kar Wai, Christopher Doyle and Wing Shya, a representation of hidden love within conservative society.

As a very modest and reserved society in terms of love, physicality and especially public expressions of these, also very concerned with perception, there can be different barriers within love in Senegal, not only in regards to having it, but also in how it is shown and whether or not it is shown. This is a love story bound by societal pressure, the fear of being seen, but it also shows that physicality doesn’t equate intimacy and love. 

Despite the power that our societies can give to it, there’s so much ambiguity and falseness in perception. What is shown is never what we see.

With this series, I wanted to show a glimpse of the intimacy that we often don’t see, that isn't necessarily physical but can be, while playing with the fact that it shouldn't be shown.

“Ma la raw” translates to “I miss you more” in Wolof, but it literally means “I am ahead of you” like in a race for example, and can technically mean anything: I love you more, I care more for you, I desire you more…A connection through distance.

2024. So long a life presents a glimpse into the multifaceted nature of one’s coming of age, through the depiction of a personal archive of daily life. 

In this project, Amy Sarr reenacts the Xoymet, a Saint-Louisian (Senegal) tradition dating back to the 1930s, in which brides borrowed photographs from their relatives, friends and neighbors to exhibit in their groom’s room on the days of their wedding. While maintaining the intimate nature of these exhibitions through the domestic setting and familial portrait style imagery, Amy revisits this tradition by ornating the room with imagery related to her subject’s personal experience. She brings forward certain elements of Senegalese culture that can influence a woman’s life, ranging from the mundane to cultural memory, through themes of transmission, religion, loss, gender roles, sisterhood…

So long a life stemmed from Amy’s endeavor to question the emphasis placed on marriage as the pivotal step in a woman’s identity and becoming such within Senegalese society. She therefore brings you into the intimacy of a family home, of a woman’s life, and into some of the experiences and memories that have formed the person facing you today.

2024. Tributing the West African tradition of using fabric as portrait backdrops, this series revisits this within a contemporary lens. From pioneers of portraiture such as Mama Cassett, Malick Sidibé Oumar Ly, Seydou Keita or Soly Sanlé who often used fabrics as backdrops and captured the essence of their subjects within a certain casualty and between intention and practicality, fabric has always been readily available in West Africa. The fabric choices have been evolving throughout time, and have increasingly become a way to depict national pride as we now see more people proudly wearing traditional clothes. This also serves as a tribute to the importance of materiality in Africa, and to the process of making clothes, from buying fabrics at the market to working with tailors to bring a design to life.

Looming Behind revolves around the current immigration crisis in Senegal, and the notion of leaving and being left behind. As an increasing number of our youth is embarking towards the Mediterranean, we are all affected by this crisis, the desperation surrounding it and the mysteries and lost lives of our loved ones. As 2 men look behind at the land while others stare towards the Sea, the image reminds us of everything and everyone emigrants leave behind in the midst of desperation for a better future for themselves and their loved ones. The choice of fabric serves as a metaphor as African fabrics have historically transcended borders, but also brings forward how commodified and dehumanized our migrants have become in global discourse and news. Alternating depending on the light, the bicolor nature of Chantoum serves to illustrate the dichotomous nature and outcomes of emigration, as well as our now ambivalent relationship to the ocean due to the crisis; the pairing of light and darkness also contribute to this. No matter what the outcome of the journey is, those that leave and those that stay become a memory.

2021. This series highlights the importance and insertion of art into Senegalese culture as a means and outcome of assembly, blurring the line between ‘culture’ in an artistic sense and ‘culture’ in a customs sense. The significant presence of art in all spaces is one of the most beautiful aspects of Senegalese society. It enters all spheres, from the economic to the theological passing by sports. 

This series was inspired by the entire Negritude movement and notably Senghor’s efforts to bring forward Senegalese and African art. From Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art” explaining that African Americans will never be viewed as humans until their art is recognized as such, to Senghor’s “cultural diplomacy”, this movement displayed the power that culture can have in perception. To Senghor, the Negritude movement was the “humanism of the 20th century”, each civilisation could bring their most creative values to the table. He viewed each Senegalese artist as an ambassador, and made sure they were present on the international scene- from Mamadou Wade in Moscou to Ery Camara in Mexico.