Création Africa champions female curators and digital innovation at 2024 Dakar Biennale
By CityLife Arts Writer
From 7 November to 7 December 2024, 65 artists from 29 countries unite under the theme “The Wake” at Senegal’s Dakar Biennale. Wolff Architects represent South Africa in the Biennale’s main exhibition We Will Stop When the Earth Roars.
The Institut français’s Création Africa programme continues to support contemporary African art through its official partnership with the 15th Dakar Biennale (7 November to 7 December 2024) in Senegal. Création Africa’s commitment to amplifying diverse voices in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) is foregrounded through two exhibitions it will be supporting at Dak’Art: the associate curators’ central exhibition confronting the climate crisis curated by an all-female team, and an innovative NFT exhibition as part of the special projects of the Dakar Biennale.
Under the artistic direction of Salimata Diop, the Biennale’s theme for 2024, The Wake, brings together diverse voices from the Global South. Création Africa supports the central exhibition, On s’arrêtera quand la Terre rugira (We Will Stop When the Earth Roars) by associate curators Kara Blackmore, Marynet J. and Cindy Olohou, working alongside Diop. The exhibition showcases nine pioneering artists, including Beya Gille Gacha, Cléophée R. F. Moser, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Laeïla Adjovi, Louisa Marajo, Manuela Lara, Moufouli Bello, Némo Camus, and Wolff Architects from South Africa, whose work transforms environmental crises into powerful calls for action.
Wolff Architects is a design studio concerned with developing an architectural practice of consequence through the mediums of design, advocacy, research and documentation. In their Cape Town office, Ilze and Heinrich Wolff lead a team of highly skilled, committed and engaged architects, creative practitioners and administrators. Both principals have lectured internationally including Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan, and India and continue to do so. The work of the practice has also been included at various international exhibitions including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, the São Paulo Art Biennale, and the South American Architecture Biennale. In 2023 the practice was awarded an honourable mention for their work “Tectonic Shifts” at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Lesley Lokko.
For the exhibition We Will Stop When the Earth Roars they present Summer Flowers a video and sound installation as a sitting room with select publications and pressed flowers. This domestic space is an homage to author Bessie Head’s house built in 1969, Serowe Botswana. The home was built with the proceeds from her first novel “When Rainclouds Gather”. It is in this house that she later, mostly in the evenings, wrote her landmark novel, “A Question of Power”. The gathering space and flower archive is an essential part of the connection to Bessie Head who spent days working with other volunteers in Serowe as a gardener and as part of, Boiteko, a communal gardening project. The gardening project would later become a central part of her novel. It was also at this time that South Africa, her country of origin, was under-going the most extreme and violent destruction of historic black neighbourhoods under the racist Group Areas Act. Bessie Head wrote that she is “mainly concerned with the manner in which the people lost the land” and thus, saw her work as in conversation and in continuity with that of Sol Plaatje, who decades earlier documented the effect of the Land Act in “Native Life” and for which she wrote the introduction to its republication in 1982.
Today the house is a Botswana national heritage site and the film Summer Flowers attempts to thread together her voice, her writing, her spatial practice and her conversation with the work of Sol Plaatje. It is within this context, through this installation, that Wolff Architects give thanks to Bessie Head, to Sol Plaatje, to prophetic constructions such as Rainclouds and Boiteko Garden, and to the people who made them.
The exhibition, supported through Création Africa’s comprehensive funding programme, features immersive installations, sound and tactile environments, sculptures, and performances. With scenography conceived by Studio Clémence Farrell and the curators, the exhibition guides audiences through an evocative journey examining environmental challenges facing the Global South.
In parallel, the Création Africa programme also supports The Wake – Another Dimension, a groundbreaking exhibition as part of the special projects of the Biennale, curated by Anna-Alix Koffi, founder and curator of SOMETHING Art Space in Abidjan. This project aims to reclaim blockchain technology for African artists, creating new opportunities for monetisation and global reach – while strengthening economic independence.
The Wake – Another Dimension features works by artists Isaac Nana Opoku (Ghana), Keren Lasme (Ivory Coast), Linda Dounia (Senegal), Youssef El Idrissi (Morocco), Eden Tinto Collins (Ghana), Gystère (Brazil), Nigyllia McLain (Jamaica-USA), MDD (Rwanda), Ayanfe Olarinde (Nigeria), Hako Hankson (Cameroon) and Adama Sylla (Senegal).
Following its debut at the Dakar Biennale, The Wake – Another Dimension will travel to 1-54 Art Fair in Marrakech (Morocco), Institut français in Yaoundé (Cameroon), Alliance Française in Accra (Ghana) and SOMETHING Art Space in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). The exhibition is supported in Dakar by Institut français Senegal, with the travelling component of the exhibition made possible through the collaboration of the French Cultural Network.
The Dakar Biennale will feature a series of conferences, professional meetings, satellite exhibitions, and a programme of special projects.
About Création Africa
Création Africa is supported by the Institut français and the French cultural network in Africa, with funding from the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Création Africa is a comprehensive support programme that aims to empower talent in Africa’s Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). African creators, entrepreneurs, and cultural professionals across multiple sectors – from music and contemporary art to digital creation and video games – are provided meaningful opportunities to showcase their work at major international events, connect with global networks, and strengthen local creative markets. The programme aims to amplify African voices and creativity while fostering sustainable growth in the continent’s cultural sectors through tailored mentorship, professional development, and direct access to European platforms.