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Photo Courtesy Of "Seule contre l’Univert " conceived with Eva Barois De Caevel © Bétonsalon – Centre for Art and ResearchYOUR GENESIS, AND WHAT WOULD PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT YOU?I was born in Arras, a city in northern France, to a Senegalese father and a French mother. "What a funny place to be born in", people always say. Since that, I have travelled. I’m a child of the soppy ideals of French-style miscegenation, and of racism.
WHAT’S YOUR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND?I completed all my education in private schools after having passed through the public school system where I was manhandled by a communist teacher because she thought I was richer than the other neighbourhood kids (I owned a Mickey pencil case). Since then, I only mixed with
bourgeois children, which gave me huge complexes. Then I obtained a
Baccalauréat with Distinction in Art History, followed by a
Hypokhâgne Khâgne at
Lycée Louis-Le-Grand among the young fascist nobility and old racist professors. Then I studied aesthetic philosophy and art history at the Sorbonne. I have an MA in Art History. I did a Master of Professional Studies in curatorial practice, followed by internships, a residence. I travelled.
WHY CURATION?My parents are artists who have struggled all their lives. It makes me sad. I probably wanted to do something. I never really understood the rules whereby an artist became recognized. It worried me and it still does. I wanted to understand what was going on in that network of power, it could have been another one but it happened that my education gave me an interest in art. All through my studies, I strove to acquire real tools of aesthetic judgment. I thought they could exist. Then I came across an honest teacher who told me that "all this was only narratives." It took me a while to get over it. I need to know that there are some objective supervisory authorities, it's a comforting thought to me. Unfortunately, there isn’t any, or rather, they are always very biased and dishonest. Since then, I oscillate between the belief in the importance of a "social" and "critical" art and the fervour for pure aesthetic emotions. Then everything annoys me and I no longer believe in anything. I think I will change jobs soon.
CAN ANYBODY CALL THEMSELVES A CURATOR IN THIS DAY AND AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA?I don’t understand this question. I’ve learned a trade through school and practice, a trade that requires to master some techniques. It’s not a walk in the park. Do you mean that the possibility of arranging images indefinitely and present them to the whole world from your personal computer makes you a curator? Maybe, whatever. Or do you mean that people can write anything on their LinkedIn? It’s true too, and rather funny.
HOW DOES YOUR INTERACTION WITH AN ARTIST PROGRESS FROM YOUR INITIAL ENCOUNTER WITH THEIR WORK, TO STUDIO VISIT AND THEN TO THE REALIZATION OF A MUSEUM EXHIBITION?It depends: sometimes the artists look for me, or I look for them, or they’re imposed on me. In any case, most often, studio visits today are token. It’s something for the VIPs where we drink coffee or something for the gallery assistants who have to watch over their stable. How do I interact with the artists? I try to see a lot, read a lot. I keep things in my head. I contact people. I spend hours on Google Images, hours writing emails and on Skype. At times there’s an exhibition. And a catalogue. And we're all very tired. And I still wonder if it was really worth it. Otherwise, I also have artist friends, and generally when we meet, we talk about other things than work. But occasionally we also work together.
WHAT ROLE DOES THE ARTIST HAVE IN SOCIETY?It’s a very difficult question. Sometimes, I still have faith in the artist – and in art – as something susceptible to make us think, to move us, to subvert things, etc. But most of the times, this is just about looking at the actors – and artifact – of a brutal economy at the service of the powerful. Within this economy, how to distinguish what really has value, since any symbolic, political or semantic value is absorbed by the economic value?
WHAT TYPE OF ART DO YOU MOSTLY IDENTIFY WITH?The "socially engaged practices", works that attempt to offer a critical and political content that’s not purely posture. And what I find beautiful (or what is produced by beautiful persons): this opens a broad, shifting and eclectic category. I try to be comfortable with it.
WHAT THEMES DO YOU PURSUE AND DO YOU HAVE A PREFERRED MEDIUM?The postcolonial question, because it echoes in me, because this is a reading of the world that does me some good. Apart from that, all the works that leave room for alternative narratives (that is to say: narratives that do not go along the lines of upholding hegemonic narratives, of upholding white, male, heterosexual and capitalist supremacy). But beware, only when it is not just an easy way for the artist to talk big. In other words, something as rare to find as some hair on a bald man’s head. I don’t have a favourite medium. Videos tend to succeed in touching me faster, more often and more powerfully. I cannot tell you why.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON AT THE MOMENT?I work with
Koyo Kouoh, who is my godmother in the trade, on different projects. I am a curator for
RAW Material Company, the art centre she founded and runs in Dakar. Last week was the opening of
"Body Talk", an exhibition which has just started at the Frac Lorraine in Metz, after having been displayed in Belgium and Sweden. We worked for two years on another exhibition which will begin on December 3,
"Streamlines", at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. We also work on
EVA International, the Irish Biennial, that will start in April in Limerick, and on
the creation of a training program in RAW. RAW will become a school, and it's a big project. I am also currently conducting a workshop in Bétonsalon –
Centre d’Art et de Recherche, in Paris, which is part of the exhibition
"Co-Workers – Beyond Disaster", and I work as an editor on a future publication dedicated to the artist Renzo Martens’
project in Lusanga, Congo. I also write papers, I receive a lot of commissions and that delights me. And I regularly give lectures on topics such as "The treatment of the question of the veil in contemporary art." I have plenty of exhibition projects in mind, and I'm also trying to write my first book.
HOW DOES YOUR VISION TRANSLATE IN OTHER ASPECTS OF YOUR LIFE (food, fashion, interior design -your personal taste)?My vision is political, so it is present in my work but obviously if it’s present in my work, it is because my work and my everyday life are a continuum, as much as possible. This is actually a problem sometimes: if I could separate my principles from my professional activities, I would already be much richer! In short, I try to live by the principles of Ivan Illich: I try to develop my autonomy, to cultivate convivial and vernacular ways. I try to be lucid. Otherwise, I cook a lot and I listen to Mansfield.TYA (which could be an answer to your first question, what people may be surprised to discover about me). Design-wise, I live in Château-Rouge (an area of Paris that Fox News recently ranked among the "no-go zones") and from our window, you can visually document the police violence against the poor and people of colour that occurs here on a daily basis.
Photo Courtesy Of Adrienne Wilkinson
