What can an art biennale in Dakar, Senegal, tell us about current discourses surrounding the place of art in the world, and in the academic study of anthropology? This volume investigates the Dak'Art biennale, ranked among the world's top 20 biennials, drawing upon fieldwork, archival research, and the experiences of those involved. In so doing, the chapters make a statement about the impact of globally-acting art biennials, contributing to current scholarship both on biennales and the anthropology of art scene more widely. Part I opens with the history of its foundation and considers it in conjunction with the rise of contemporary art in Senegal. Part II deals with the biennale's various objectives, selection strategies, exhibition spaces, platforms for debate, and discourses between the State, the secretariat and local artists and art world professionals. Part III examines the cyclical creation of contemporary African art, and questions if the Biennial creates local canonical practices. The Epilogue uses the Dak'art biennale to question assumptions around practice in general biennale scholarship and work. Featuring a dialogic structure between practitioners of art and anthropologists, this unique volume will be of interest to students of anthropology, art history and practice, African studies and curatorial practice.

This edited volume proposes a theoretical reflection on the different artistic geographies of East-Central Europe (ECE) from an interdisciplinary perspective found at the intersection of art history, art and politics, and critical geography. Contributors argue that this multiplicity is a defining feature of the region. At the same time, chapters employ the concept of “plural geographies” and call for an equal geography, based on solidarity and an equal distribution of capital, which could allow plural geographies to exist and be described. The “multiple geographies” of ECE consider the perspective of local conditions and emphasize how this region was part of successive empires with an important ethnic diversity and changing borders, giving it historical layers and multicultural characteristics. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, political studies, cultural studies, and geography.

PAINTING-PERFORMANCE-POLITICS is the first critical and comprehensive publication on the Senegalese artist, curator and activist, El Sy (*1954), who is one of the most significant figures in African contemporary art. Not only has his innovative practice as a painter, performance artist, stage designer and curator shaped the art scene in Dakar since the late 1970s, but he is also internationally recognized as a leading protagonist of conceptual and politicized art collectives in Africa including the Laboratoire Agit Art and Tenq. This publication is the first art historical analysis that contextualizes his work and connects it to notions of resistance and activism in post-Independence Africa. It includes new essays by internationally renowned art historians, writers, and curators as well as unseen archival material. It places El Sy s activities within the framework of Senghorian post-Independence aesthetics, artists collectives in Africa, and Senegalese-German post-war relations. This publication offers a rare insight into intellectual and activist art practice in Africa prior to the "Global Turn" of 1989. "

In Senghor’s Shadow is a unique study of modern art in postindependence Senegal. Elizabeth Harney examines the art that flourished during the administration of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal’s first president, and in the decades since he stepped down in 1980. As a major philosopher and poet of Negritude, Senghor envisioned an active and revolutionary role for modern artists, and he created a well-funded system for nurturing their work. In questioning the canon of art produced under his aegis—known as the Ecole de Dakar—Harney reconsiders Senghor’s Negritude philosophy, his desire to express Senegal’s postcolonial national identity through art, and the system of art schools and exhibits he developed. She expands scholarship on global modernisms by highlighting the distinctive cultural history that shaped Senegalese modernism and the complex and often contradictory choices made by its early artists. Heavily illustrated with nearly one hundred images, including some in color, In Senghor’s Shadow surveys the work of a range of Senegalese artists, including painters, muralists, sculptors, and performance-based groups—from those who worked at the height of Senghor’s patronage system to those who graduated from art school in the early 1990s. Harney reveals how, in the 1970s, avant-gardists contested Negritude beliefs by breaking out of established artistic forms. During the 1980s and 1990s, artists such as Moustapha Dimé, Germaine Anta Gaye, and Kan-Si engaged with avant-garde methods and local artistic forms to challenge both Senghor’s legacy and the broader art world’s understandings of cultural syncretism. Ultimately, Harney’s work illuminates the production and reception of modern Senegalese art within the global arena.

Africa remix: Contemporary art of a continent features the work of more than 85 artists from 25 countries on the African continent and the Diaspora.

“Insightful . . . should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in contemporary art on the continent of Africa, its politics, its display, its economics.” —African Arts Art World City focuses on contemporary art and artists in the city of Dakar, a famously thriving art metropolis in the West African nation of Senegal. Joanna Grabski illuminates how artists earn their livelihoods from the city’s resources, possibilities, and connections. She examines how and why they produce and exhibit their work and how they make an art scene and transact with art world mediators such as curators, journalists, critics, art lovers, and collectors from near and far. Grabski shows that Dakar-based artists participate in a platform that has a global reach. They extend Dakar’s creative economy and the city’s urban vibe into an “art world city.” “In her fine-grained analysis, Joanna Grabski demonstrates the ways that the urban environment and the sites of art production, exhibition, and sale imbricate one another to constitute Dakar as an Art World City.” —Mary Jo Arnoldi, Curator, Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian “A valuable addition to the anthropology of cities and of art worlds. It stretches and revises the notion of art world to include multiple scales, and illustrates how the city enables simultaneous engagement for artists with local, national, Pan-African, and global discourses and platforms.” —City & Society “A beautiful book. The photographs, most of which are by the author, are stunning.” —College Art Association Reviews