12/23/2023 0 Comments Npr sugar story"For this Biennale, it's an invitation to create new forms, new models, new relations," said Elhadji Malick Ndiaye, the artistic director. Originally set for 2020 but sidelined by the pandemic, this year's festival marks the 14th edition of the fair, which traces its roots to a literary festival launched in Dakar in 1990. When forming the sculptures – using a secret method he will not divulge – he mixed the two products together, just like "the history of the two countries."īalu is one of hundreds of artists from around the world presenting at the biennale, which is expected to draw some 250,000 visitors. When buying sugar at the supermarket in Kinshasa to make the statues, he bought local sugar, but also found imported sugar from Brazil. " were used like tools, like an instrument, for sugar exploitation." The objects he sculpted "represent the trajectories that these people took to end up being slaves in Brazil," Balu says. The legacy of this era lives on in the economic inequality between the global north and south today, he points out. He explains that the enslaved people were sent to labor on sugar plantations in Portuguese colonies and beyond and helped build the grandiose wealth of European empires. Their quest in that era for trade, slaves, and ultimately colonial domination led to the demise of the Kingdom of Kongo.Īnd why make statues out of something that could be destroyed by an errant cup of tea? Balu, a visual artist from Congo's capital, Kinshasa, chose the medium carefully. But the arrival of Europeans proved disastrous for Kongo. Balu's replica of a tomb for the Kongolese king, adorned with crosses, shows how the two cultures mixed as they engaged in commerce and diplomacy. ![]() Kongo was quick to adopt Christianity during this period. ![]() Most of the statues represent goods made by or traded by the Portuguese during their expeditions in the 15th and 16th centuries to the Kingdom of Kongo, located in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, prior to Africa's colonization. " Sucre!" interjects Balu, who's mingling with the crowd. "What's it made out of?" multiple people wonder aloud. Upon reaching the beige sculptures of Hilary Balu, patron after patron at the center pauses to ponder the intricate, ancient-looking works of art – a replica of a sword and a helmet, sculptures of a lion and a monkey – all carved out of. ![]() Concerts, gallery openings, lectures, dance performances, and films are premiering across the city almost every day, from mid-May to mid-June. They're here for the Dakar Biennale, West Africa's top contemporary international arts festival, which takes over the Senegalese capital every two years. Inside, in the exhibition rooms, it's humans flitting about, waltzing from one piece of art to the next – lingering at a painting here, a tapestry there. Bats swirl among the towering palm and baobab trees on the lawn of the Douta Seck cultural center in the bustling Medina neighborhood, just north of downtown Dakar. Outside, the afternoon heat has given way to the cool evening air.
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