Following his spectacular success at the 2024 Venice Biennale, painter Alioune Diagne returns to Paris with "Saytu," a collection of previously unseen canvases born from an investigation carried out over the last two years across Senegal.
In Wolof, the term saytu refers to the act of searching and inspecting in order to find and preserve what is precious. With this perspective, the artist spent several months traveling through the center and southeast of the country, meeting minority communities living in isolated regions—the Bassari, Bédik, Dialonké, and Coniagui—whose ancestral customs and rituals he documented as they strive to perpetuate and preserve them. The project began with a two-month stay in Bassari country, in the village of Etiolo, followed by time among the Bédik in the localities of Ethiwar, Ibel, Iwol, and Andjel, where Alioune Diagne visited twice. Diagne also shared daily life with the Dialonkés in Madina Baffé and traveled to central Senegal among the Coniaguis in Koupentoum, now unfortunately marked by the gradual disappearance of certain rituals. Close to these communities, the artist patiently observed, documented, and then reinterpreted these traditions through his highly singular visual language. His technique, gradually developed over the years, relies on the assembly of small modules he calls "unconscious signs": aggregated together, they compose figurative scenes of great intensity. Masks, dances, costumes, music, and songs are thus transposed into painting, in an attempt to capture the vibrant energy and spiritual essence of these ceremonies. Influenced, without initially fully realizing it, by the craftsmanship of his grandfather, a Quranic master, Diagne conceives this formal, almost pointillist vocabulary as a universal language capable of communicating the inexpressible. Between abstraction and figuration, some canvases like Jeune fille Bassari (2025) immediately reveal themselves to the viewer, while others like La foule qui danse or Sous l’arbre sacré (2025) invite the spectator to a slow deciphering, preserving the mystery inherent in these traditions passed down orally from generation to generation. A chronicler of his time, the artist aims to constitute, in his own way, the future archives of Senegal. Faces/Time, a monumental installation bringing together 100 portraits of individuals encountered during his journey, illustrates this ambition. These faces of anonymous people, bearers of individual stories and memories, reflect the intimacy of each existence while recalling the evanescent identities of our digital profiles. "Saytu" thus fits into a broader reflection on the transmission of knowledge in the era of social networks and globalization. How do these cultural heritages evolve today? What place will they occupy tomorrow? Among the communities met, Diagne also paid particular attention to women and their specific rituals, highlighting their central role in social life and the transmission of knowledge. La première ligne (2025) and Rythme Dialonké (2026) pay homage to their strength and creativity, placing these traditions within a contemporary dialogue on the place of women in our societies. This project also broadly questions the fragility of cultural heritage on a global scale. Through a resolutely contemporary pictorial writing, Alioune Diagne invites us to reflect on how today's societies can preserve, reinvent, and transmit their traditions.
Source: paris.fr — photo: Galerie Templon