For the 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale, IESA renewed its participation in the OFF program with its Senegalese branch, the ISM Madiba Leadership Institut, with an exhibition by three artists:

- Mulki Longo, photographer

- Camara Gueye, visual artist

- Aartisis Ndongo d’art, young visual artist, from May 24 to 31 at the recently opened gallery at the Madiba Leadership Institut, at Point E Commissariat.

The curating was carried out by IESA and ISM students from the arts and culture track under the curatorial direction of Hafida Jemni Di Folco, head of the Africa department at IESA.

This remarkable experience was a resounding success. Attendance at the exhibition was high: students, parents, teachers, artists, members of the Institut français in Dakar, and curators.

A discussion led by Professor Massamba Mbaye on the impact of mediation on the art market, and Design, was held the day after the exhibition opening.

This experience allowed students to grasp the conditions and principles of an international institutional program.

They worked on the project beforehand to secure a venue.

In the end, the school opted to provide a permanent space for artistic and cultural productions in an independent wing of the school.

I am Them - Mulki Longo

Mulki Longo has been a photographer for ten years now. Through photography, she seeks to communicate feelings, emotions, the unspeakable. That is why her subjects are always very personal and revealing the intimate acts as a therapy for her. Adopted very young in Germany, Mulki grew up in Berlin, far from her origins, where she was enriched by a mainstream culture very open to the art scene. But in adolescence, she was in search of identity and set out to find her biological mother. She documented this search by photographing her adoptive mother’s daily life, notably her way of living, of putting on makeup, of moving through space, as if to absorb her and communicate her admiration to her.

With older photographs, Mulki confronts her past with the present and thus questions her biological and cultural heritage. Moreover, this medium is a genuine means of communication for the artist, notably with her biological mother, Dounia, who was deaf and mute when she found her. Despite the fact that they were strangers to each other when they met, Dounia’s love for her daughter is expressed through gestures and the gaze, the mirror of the soul, which Mulki wanted to capture and preserve by photographing her.

Camara Gueye

Camara Gueye, born in 1968, is a major figure of the Senegalese art scene.

As a child, he liked to scribble on all the walls of the house with charcoal. It is as if this charcoal drawing came back to him: he very much enjoys working on large supports in charcoal and broad-stroke pencil.

Graduating top of his class from the Beaux-Arts in Dakar in 1997, he was selected in 2000 for the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art, which immediately boosted his international career. In 2005, he refined his ceramics skills at the European Ceramic Center in Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.

Quickly spotted by a Dutchman who collects his work and opens the doors of Europe to him, he is invited to several residencies.

He has taken part in many editions of the Dakar Biennale, Dak’Art, both "in" and "off," at the World Festival of Black Arts, in Mali, in Côte d’Ivoire, in Paris, notably at the Musée Dapper, during the exhibition “le Sénégal contemporain”, in Geneva & Zurich, in Germany, in Liège, Brussels, in Austria, in Spain, in Beirut, in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Washington & Shenzhen.

He is collected notably by Europeans and Americans, institutions & foundations, Dapper, Tilder, the World Bank Washington; in 2006 one of his works was acquired by the French State and in June 2009 another of his creations was acquired by the Chinese State, in Shenzhen.

"I have a well-structured approach to the work to be made: the line of the drawing springs forth already thought out, composed and imagined in my mind. Then, it is all a matter of rebalancing."

Seydina Mohamed NDIAYE, known as "Artiis Ndongo d’Art"

Born on October 12, 1989 in Dakar in the Médina neighborhood, Seydina Mohamed NDIAYE, known as "Artiis Ndongo d’Art," took an interest in art very early on. In 2003, he began his initiation at the Centre Doli Yakar d’Art Néougou Mbaye. Later, his meeting with the artist Tita Mbaye allowed him to enter the Senegalese art scene. He held his first exhibitions at the SOS children’s village as well as at the Red Cross. He has also held video exhibitions via YouTube and took part in the Biennale in 2018.