When encountering the work of Senegalese painter Aliou “Badu” Diack, the viewer must be patient. We must let ourselves be absorbed by the dappled light, give time for our eyes to adjust, be present in the here and now in order to meet the ambiguous figures who will then begin to emerge from the shadows. The artist’s paintings are textured and colored with natural pigments of burnt oranges, indigo blues and auburn browns which bleed into one another, the traces of rain and Sahelian wind bringing forms together and pulling them apart. Most often at human scale, Diack’s works open up before us like portals into the forests of his childhood in Sidi Bougou, in Senegal’s semi-arid Mbour region. Indeed, Diack describes walking to school through these forests in the half-light of the dawn, the animals and insects only slowly making themselves known from the shadows (1). A gentle murmur here, a rustle there. For the artist, it is through the journey itself and our embodied presence within it, that knowledge comes to us. In his work Pilgrimage (2024), he takes us on a physical path around the home of one of his idols, the late sculptor Ousmane Sow, and into the rhythms of spirituality and one of the deepest mysteries of existence: humanity itself.

Sow built his house – today known as The Maison Ousmane Sow – with the same hands that gave rise to the sculptures displayed there today, larger than life figures modeled on his heroes of historical and contemporary life. Visitors gaze up at the prodigious forms of Nelson Mandela, Toussaint Louverture, and Nubian wrestlers amongst others. For Diack, Sow is a monument of contemporary art who merits the respect and admiration of not only his home country of Senegal but of the entire African continent (2). In choosing to work here, the Diack not only creates proximity to Sow, but seeks to breathe new life into Sow’s creations. Fifteen human-scale canvases deck the enclosure wall; rather than intervene directly in the museum space, Diack incorporates Sow’s figures into these new tableaux which face outwards. He expands on their lives by bringing them into new relationships with one another and with viewers by inviting them out into the public space. We find Diack’s canvases alive with the forms of Sow’s sculptures, coming into kinetic dynamism between mottled bursts of yellows and burgundies that shift shape with the gaze to reveal new images. On the exterior wall of the Maison Ousmane Sow, the canvases enter into a seamless dialogue with the colors and textures of the sandy streets of the Virage neighborhood.  

Public works are of increasing importance to Diack, who in recent years developed a piece called The Bed of Life (2020-2021), a roaming living sculpture upon which members of the public could recline, relax, meditate and enjoy the abundant plant life which framed the bed’s surface. The Bed of Life is perhaps Diack’s most explicit invitation thus far to his viewers to take a moment to enter into a mindful engagement with the world around them, but it is a thread which runs through all of Diack’s practice. In bringing more of his work into the public space, Diack goes one step further and weaves his pieces into a broader tradition within Senegal which elevates public space to the spiritual plane. 

One such example of this tradition is the “thiant”, a Sufi practice of collective prayer wherein disciples recite Islamic prayers for hours on end often while walking together in circles, under tents which crop up on sidewalks and backstreets. Movement is an essential act within the “thiant” serving to bridge the material and spiritual worlds through meditative, shared repetition. While the “thiant” is specific to the Senegalese Mouride tradition, such practices can be found across Islam, along with the obligation of ultimate pilgrimage to Mecca. Once in Mecca, pilgrims must circumambulate the Kaaba seven times, joining crowds of fellow Muslims in this act known as “tawaf”. Back in Senegal, every year millions make their own pilgrimages to the holy sites of their syncretic strand of Islam, Christianity or Animism, be it the Mouride “Magal” in the sacred city of Touba or the worship of the Black Madonna in Popenguine. These pilgrimages contribute to the rhythm of the year for the entire country, and to the collective fabric of society in general. Buses filled to the brim trace paths between Senegal’s major cities and beyond as countless individuals join together in a voyage towards communion with the divine. Diack is a practicing Muslim who adheres to the Mouride order, and who in this new project explores how art can create new ways to engage in pilgrimage. In organizing his paintings on the wall which encloses the Maison Ousmane Sow, a home to figures bursting with life, Diack asks viewers to circambulate a house of creation. He asks how we can pay our respects in a way that is phenomenological, and lived. 

Framing this project as a pilgrimage for both Diack and us the visitors reminds us of the importance of the notion of return for the realization of our wholeness. Sometimes we must go back in order to go forward. Back to sites of importance for our understanding of the world, the cosmos and our own existence. This is a passion shared by Diack and his idol, Sow, who have both produced work which evokes the power of multidirectional diasporic movement. Within the Maison Ousmane Sow we find one such unfinished project, The Free Man (2003). It depicts a family of African origin, a man leading his wife and small child, his right leg atop a rock plinth, moving decisively forward. Sow intended this sculpture to be recast in bronze atop the Mamelles hill in Dakar, close to the westernmost tip of mainland Africa, and representing the family’s journey out of America after the abolition of slavery, through a tunnel in the Atlantic, and back to the continent of their origin. We know now that this same idea would eventually be refashioned by the government of former President Abdoulaye Wade and built as the African Renaissance Monument, with North Korean funds. 

For Diack, we clearly see evidence of his fascination with migration and the notion of return in the La Caverne series (developed between 2105 and 2018) which recall early human cave paintings in their earthy, natural tones and the outlines of animal figures. Behind this aesthetic connection however is Diack’s conviction that the creators of the original cave paintings were the world’s first artists who help us today to understand our own evolutionary history (3). He calls upon artists of our present moment to do the same, to mark this moment in time and to themselves create the conditions for the coming of the prophet. Pilgrimage is an extension of this overarching project, using artworks and scenography to invite viewers into a spiritual circumambulation of the Maison Ousmane Sow, a building which shelters Sow’s experiments in sculpting not just human figures but in his choice of subjects, humanity itself. 

In this we also see echoes of the longstanding artist collective, the Laboratoire Agit’Art, whose public performances and sculptural interventions were designed to act on - and agitate - society and humankind itself. It is believed that Sow was close to one of the Laboratoire’s founding members, Joe Ouakam, and that he himself turned to sculpture from his work as a physiotherapist in order to go from improving on humans to creating them  anew (4). Sow’s sculptures are archetypes of his ideal humans, while Diack leads us humans back into the darkness of the forest and the cave to commune with the world around us in a more mindful way. In the words of Diack, “and how can you create life?” (5).   

 These questions and experiments in spirituality and humankind come at a key moment for the world at large as we grapple with climate catastrophe and state-condoned violence on a devastating scale. Within Senegal, the population recently put their faith in a new government amid hopes of political and civic renewal. While the Senegalese people are still empowered by their rekindled sense of social potential, we need artists like Aliou Diack and Ousmane Sow to ask how each one of us can build a humanity we believe in. Thankfully, Pilgrimage creates the conditions for us to begin answering, in its simple invocation to walk together. 

Dulcie Abrahams Altass
pour OH GALLERY

NOTES

1. Nature, son et peinture, Artist interview for Radio Papesse, 2018, transcript accessed via https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v-Ijed16vgZPfGl99WfGoKZje1Ic_70Y/view

2. Author interview with the artist, 24/04/2024

3. Nature, son et peinture, Artist interview for Radio Papesse, 2018, transcript accessed via https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v-Ijed16vgZPfGl99WfGoKZje1Ic_70Y/view

4. Author interview with the artist, 24/04/2024

5. Portrait d’Aliou Diack, podcast, OH Gallery, transcript accessed via https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f8d677ef6d74a03f47cd817/t/61488e9615a1635cfaa57ff8/1632145046972/OHGALLERY_Podcast_AliouDiack_Retranscription.pdf