<p>With seeds, earth, and hair, the Italian artist with a Senegalese background draws on the experience of ignored communities</p>

Ingrid Luquet-Gad

Artist Binta Diaw honors the memory of enslaved African women



<p>Born in 1995 and based in Milan, Binta Diaw is of a generation that grew up with anxiety about climate issues. However, major thinkers in decolonial ecology (the writer Malcom Ferdinand, for example) remind us that while the environmental crisis puts us all in the same boat, we haven’t all set sail under the same skies.</p>
<p>Diaw draws on the traditions of women of African descent and diasporic identities to address current issues: this violent and living memory is about everyone’s survival, in an ecosystem that is going up in flames.</p>



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<p><em>Dïà s p o r a</em> (2021), shown at the 2022 Berlin Biennale, is a spider-like installation. Braids of hair fill the space, echoing the hidden resistance of African women in slave plantations. Inside hair accessories, they would hide maps of the plantations where they were held captive, or transport seeds from their country, like those of the rice plants that Diaw grows as part of the installation. <em>Chorus of Soil</em>
(2020) follows the same concept. Using soil that contains seeds, the artist creates a plan of an 18<sup>th</sup>-century slave ship on the ground, containing signs of life, of a different life.<br></p>
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<p>Diaw’s works begin with the coming together of a natural material and a traditional technique. In both the style and substance of her art, she highlights the geopolitical, social, and personal issues that are an inherent part of the natural world. Using earth, seeds, or synthetic hair, she explores the paths of memory transmission within disregarded communities.</p>

<p>This summer, Binta Diaw will take part in the 12th edition of the&nbsp;Liverpool Biennial, ‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’.</p>
<p>Binta Diaw is represented by <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/20820/Galerie-C%C3%A9cile-Fakhoury" target="_blank">Galerie Cécile Fakhoury</a>&nbsp;(Abidjan, Dakar, Paris).</p>
<p>Ingrid Luquet-Gad is an art critic and PhD candidate based in Paris. She is the arts editor of <em>Les Inrockuptibles</em> and teaches philosophy of art at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.</p>
<p>English translation: Catherine Bennett.</p>
<p>Published on June 1, 2023.</p>
<p>Caption for full-bleed image:&nbsp;Installation view of Binta Diaw’s artwork <em>Chorus of soil</em>, 2020. Photograph by Antonio Maniscalco. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio.</p>
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