Barthélemy Toguo presented a new body of work during the Dakar Biennale / Dak’art 2018 OFF at the Galerie de la Librairie des 4 Vents in Dakar from May 3 to June 2, 2018. Hafida Jemni Di Folco, head of the Africa department at IESA arts&culture, curated the exhibition.
Barthélémy Toguo offers a translation of the world drawn from historical and contemporary events in distant or nearby territories.
Students of the Madiba Leadership Institute at ISM Dakar carried out their first full-scale project with IESA arts&culture as part of the magnificent exhibition by Barthélémy Toguo, curated by Hafida Jemni di Folco, head of the Africa department of IESA arts&culture, for the Off of the Dakar Biennale.
The establishment of IESA arts&culture in Dakar through a partnership with ISM to develop an Art and Culture Program within this prestigious school stems from the same desire to give students the opportunity to carry out events with the greatest artists.
BEYOND FARHANEIT 451*/ A Book Is My Hope / Tribute: The Timbuktu Manuscripts, an Ideal Library?
(*) 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which a book catches fire and burns
The exhibition "Beyond Fahrenheit 451 / A Book Is My Hope" questions the vital importance of acquiring knowledge as a response to obscurantism, censorship, and blasphemy.
Barthélémy Toguo, with singular paths crossing past, present, and future, invites a dialogue between the viewer and forms that unfold in installation, video, drawings on paper, watercolor, ink, fire, and nourishing documentation.
The central installation, "A Book Is My Hope," is a monumental work crossing the hall from top to bottom, like a defeat, displaying an insolent rupture whose outcome, ultimately, is a giant open book. The book becomes the sign of true peace, of a conversion through the acquisition of other paradigms supported by knowledge. On the floor lie the remains of the revolutionary flight.
"Beyond Fahrenheit 451* / A Book Is My Hope" is a coherent whole in perfect harmony with the theme of Dak’art, the memory of the African continent, through Timbuktu, a library city from the 11th to the 15th century, with its ideas and its intellectuals such as Senghor, and Negro Art.