Les Rencontre de Bakamo – The African Photography Biennial were launched this Saturday, December 2nd. The eleventh edition, entitled ‘Afrotopia’, takes ‘the bet that Africa can be its own center and a resource for the world in the urgent need to reinvent a future.’ The Rencontres take as their point of departure the thought of Felwine Sarr, “an active utopia that tries to find the vast expanses of what is possible in the African real and to fertilize them“Commissioner Marie-Ann Yemsi opened the festivities, along with the Minister of Culture of Mali, Mrs. N’Diaye Ramatoulaye Diallo, the President of the French Institute, Pierre Buhler and the Director of the Bamako Encounters, Samuel Sidibé.
Echoing the theme of the biennale, an exhibition entitled Afrotopia is organized at the National Museum of Mali. There are about forty photographers and video artists, living on the continent or in diasporas.
Also worth noting is the retrospective of James Barnor, one of the greatest Ghanaian photographer, as well as the collective exhibition Recent History: Deconstructed Spaces, Dissertations.
