Abu Dhabi opens its contemporary art fair to Africa
Simon Njami, curator of the section "The Day After", dedicated to African artists at the Abu Dhabi International Art Fair 2020. [Photo taken in 2017] Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Sarah Tisseyre
3 min
Everywhere, we are trying to adapt to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the United Arab Emirates, the Abu Dhabi Contemporary Art Fair will be 100% virtual this year.
It opens online this Thursday, November 19, for a week, with, for the first time, a section devoted to Africa.
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At the helm of this first African section at the Abu Dhabi Contemporary Art Fair, Simon Njami.
Famous curator, he has been working for thirty years to make African artists known on the international scene, and for the first time works in the Middle East.
“
Local collectors have a sort of Western complex.
For them, Africa is something that doesn't really exist.
I agreed to join this project precisely to tell them that it would be good for them to look elsewhere, there, where a little new things are being made.
"
In choosing the works, Simon Njami opted above all for paintings, which are easier to present online, and to promote to local collectors.
The body and the princess
“
I know they're still pretty much painting, not even photography or sculpture, is that in a classic art form.
So, I wanted this introduction to be easy for them.
In the subjects treated, it is clear that there are artists that I show regularly who work on the nude, on sexuality.
This type of work, I would not have offered them, in any case, not at first.
"
It is therefore rather, for example, the beautiful and sober series
Princesses
, by the painter Dalila Dalléas Bouzar… the faces of Algerian women appearing on a black background.
In all, there are seven galleries that present African artists: four galleries from the African continent (Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Senegal), but also two French galleries and another Romanian.
► 12th Abu Dhabi Contemporary Art Fair, Abu Dhabi Art, November 19-26, 2020
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