Entitled ‘Sunu diggante’ [what binds us together], the group exhibition brings together the work of some fifteen craftspeople and artists, mainly Senegalese and a few French, from all generations and backgrounds. They celebrate living together by asserting the collective dimension of their works: their productions call on communities of expert craftsmen or on jack-of-all-trades accomplices. The exhibition is designed to resemble a vast patchwork quilt, an age-old technique used by the Baye Fall community, in particular, to assemble disparate pieces of fabric to create a larger, more unique piece.

Borrowed from collections or produced especially for the event, the works in all media invite visitors to experience a number of immersive propositions, between the real and the virtual, the material and the conceptual, the artisanal and the mechanical. They break down frameworks and hierarchies, bring together practices that might seem distant, explore atypical materials such as synthetic wicks, repurpose scraps of leather, transform plastic into weaving material, and give a new lease of life to discarded materials.

The programme has been devised by an editorial committee made up of Senegalese creative personalities and experts on its artistic scene:

• Riad Fakhri, Cultural Programmer and Founder of Agence TRAMES;

• Olivia Marsaud, curator;

• El Hadji Malick Ndiaye, curator;

• Selly Raby Kane, designer and film-maker.

The artists and craftsmen whose works were presented:

Khadija Ba x Goossens; Ousmane Bâ; Aristide x Lesage; Diane Cescutti; Souleymane Bachir Diaw x Ibrahima Kewe Ndome; Binta Diaw; Linda Dounia; Yacob (Yankhoba Fall); Pauline Guerrier ; the artisans of Maisons Lesage and Atelier Montex; Yassine Mekhnache; Cécile Ndiaye; Bibi Seck x Manufactures sénégalaises des arts décoratifs de Thiès (MSADT); Habib Sembene; Andréa Moreno