The first comprehensive monograph on the contemporary artist Cheikh Ndiaye, including reproductions of all of his paintings and installations.
Ndiaye portrays urban environments in Africa and regions marked by the presence of the African diaspora. In his paintings, he often depicts former movie theaters and informal vendors' kiosks in Africa as well as cinematographic and archival images which point to the pictorial beauty of the African continent. Ndiaye's work subtly interrogates the current state of the dream of Independence, the role of the archives, and our ability to recollect memory images.
In addition to more than 200 pages of color illustrations, the book includes contributions by scholars, filmmakers, curators, and philosophers. It proposes a multiplicity of possible interpretative approaches towards Ndiaye's work, thus emphasizing the inherent ambiguity of any great art. The filmmaker and historian of African cinema, Manthia Diawara, gives a personal and poetic testimony on the artist's work while reading it through the lens of
Édouard Glissant's writings. The philosopher
Alain Badiou interprets Ndiaye's work as an example of "figurative abstraction" while this notion is questioned by philosopher Étienne Balibar and historian Mamadou Diouf in a discussion about Badiou's text. In the interview with Valentine Umansky, curator of international art at Tate Modern, Ndiaye speaks of the role of archives and museums in Africa while describing painting as a practice of retreat. Alicia Knock, curator at Centre Pompidou, emphasizes the African context of the artist's work while also reminding us of the latter's passion for the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. The philosopher Vincent Jacques speaks of the connection between the haptic and optic qualities in Ndiaye's work, while the essay by
Jana Ndiaye Berankova, philosopher and architecture historian, questions the links between painting and architecture.
The book is published as a bi-lingual (French and English) hardcover edition including two different kinds of graphic paper. Its black matt cloth binding contrasts with the shiny foil-stamp print on the cover and spine of the book. The cover includes an integrated reproduction of one of the artist's paintings.
Cheikh Ndiaye (born 1970 in Dakar, lives and works in New York and Dakar) graduated from the National School of fine Arts in Dakar and the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, France. The artist is particularly interested in architecture and urbanism. Composed of paintings, photography, and installations, his body of work is guided by a gaze, singular to the informal, which is the base of his artwork. Retrieved from a lethal state, obsolete objects are brought back to life. The objects return to their material plenitude and are project into a renewed imaginary. Cheikh Ndiaye has participated in numerous exhibitions across Africa and Europe. He won the Natulis Art Temporary prize in Berlin, Germany in 2012 and the Linossier prize in France in 2008.
