Mame-Diarra Niang is a name to remember. In recent months, her work has made the rounds of exhibitions, social media and publications. Born in 1982 in France, raised and educated in the Ivory Coast, Senegal and France, this self-taught photographer defies cliché. She was just spotted by the South African gallerist Michael Stevenson, who will include her in an upcoming group show. For the past four years, she has explored the plasticity of modern landscapes in different series.
“I like construction, deconstruction, ruins. I’m not trying to restore dignity to these places,” Niang explained in an interview with Anaïs Gianandrea for the magazine Afrique in visu. “What draws me to them is the plasticity of the land, which is a recurring theme in my work. I’m able to speak better about our experience by photographing our surroundings.”
Her work on the gray Sahel is just one of the series through which viewers can discover her photographs of fantastic landscapes with desaturated colors. Shot in Dakar, this series shows construction sites in the Wakam district on the former airport runway. Niang takes an iconoclastic, cinematic approach to the Pharaonic expansion that has taken place over the past decade in African cities, which have seen a surge in real estate projects modeled on Western-style commuter towns.
In the exhibition Sahel Gris at the French Institute of Dakar in 2013, the artist compared her work to a still life showing the settling process, possession and banality of Senegalese society, which is indeed what’s evoked by her grey, chilly images of a ghostly Africa.
In May, Mame-Diarra Niang will take part in an installation at Dak’art, the Dakar Biennale, in the gallery Atis/Carpediem, with Aïssa Dione and Chab Touré.
http://www.mamediarraniang.com/
http://afriqueinvisu.org/itw,926.html
