I am a 35 year old Senegalese, born in Dakar, where I grew up. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, I flew to Paris to continue my studies in the same field.
I am the youngest in a family of six. My parents, hard workers, educated their children with the awareness that as parents – who were at the time citizens of an emerging Senegal – they had a duty to make us worthy representatives of our people and our nation. We have always been watered ‘things of the world “, classics or non-classics, African or western, so that we can be of all circles while remaining ourselves.
On my return from Paris with my master degree, I joined a consulting firm and after a multinational that made me work all over Africa, and certainly contributed to make me realize the diversity and the richness of African urban societies. African urbanity: this concept appealed to me in a unique way, from issues relating to what defines the identity of consumer habits or the recognition of Africans and their contribution to how the world works. It is probably this interest that led me to buy a camera in 2010, first to fill my weekends, and then gradually to show my reality, through photos. Eventually I was showing a world that exists only in my imagination, fantast almost, where aesthetics further demonstrated the subjects that I immortalize in my studio.
Immortality, a word that has an important place in my practice of art. It is a human fantasy that aspires for us to live on even beyond our own life…. I look for it when I invite bloggers to my Studio of Vanities, so that their looks, their personalities and their aspirations live on beyond them. For me those portraits are a testimony given to future generations who will not have to wonder what being 30 years old in Dakar in 2013 meant. I also try to give immortality to the glorious African souls of the past, scattered throughout the kingdoms of Europe and Asia or the republics of America; In “Diaspora”, I lend my mortal coil in memory of illustrious Africans who have marked the world, and have fallen into oblivion. Their lives were mixtures of distraught glories and tragic regrets, much like that of African football stars outside of Africa, who harvest huddle laurels and banana skins, cheers and jeers.
People often ask me what the source of my inspiration is and I tirelessly answer that if I knew, I would be busy putting it in a bottle instead of drinking it myself…
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