A LONG TERM FRIENDSHIP | ADJI DIEYE
Adji Dieye is a young Italian artist studying propaganda methodologies in relation to a country’s state of progress, working with archival materials and intertwining images of architectures, buildings, and people.
Specifically, Dieye examines Senegal, her second country of origin.
A Long Term Friendship (2022) is part of a series of artworks reflecting on the national epistemological construction of progress, observing the intersection between institutional forms of narration and the constructions of buildings and infrastructure that have become symbols of national progress.
A Long Term Friendship horizontally intersects two different images taken at different historical moments: the first is a color photograph from the National Iconographic Archives of Senegal, depicting then-Senegalese President Macky Sall shaking hands with current Chinese President Xi Jinping; the other is a recent black-and-white photograph taken by the artist herself, showing the facade of the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, built as a gift from the Chinese state to Senegal.
The two images have been vertically sectioned, printed in large dimensions on strips of white silk, and hung on a long iron bar, arranged so that a section of the color image alternates with a section of the black-and-white photograph. The positions of these strips have also been alternated – some protrude forward, while others remain behind, close to the wall – attempting to break the linearity of the narrative and more clearly highlight the distance, both physical and metaphorical, of the subjects depicted in the images.
A Long Term Friendship highlights how spaces dedicated to cultural dissemination can be the result of a political imaginary of development, which considers art and culture as necessary symbols and means for strengthening bilateral relations with other countries.
Adji Dieye
A Long Term Friendship, 2022
Inkjet print on silk, 300 x 900 cm
Exhibition view at “Cultura persa e imparata a memoria”, © ar/ge kunst, photo by Tiberio Sorvillo, 2022
26/04/24