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✨ Memories of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara ✨ “Being an artist is a mission. I’m on a mission trying to say things in places where not everyone wants me to be, but I have this access to a large number of people. To be able to perform in front of five hundred, or even one thousand people, is an incredible opportunity. As the course of our world is not going very well, and moreover I come from a continent that the rest of the world is ignorant about, it is important to say things. And not only to the government.” This is the artistic vision of Serge Aimé Coulibaly, choreographer of the opening performance of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara, "C la Vie". Artistic Advisory Board member Yarri Kamara spoke with the Belgian-Burkinese artist "about how the Manden Charter has influenced his life and his art," classifying his work as an art rooted in the earth to take energy and rhythmic force to achieve new movements: “from African roots he proposes, through the universality of emotion, new readings to seize the present, and shape the future.” “For an artist in Africa today, there is a responsibility, whether you take it on or not—and I take it on—to be a spokesperson for a part of Africa that has profound and important things to say, things that the world can learn from. With respect to ourselves, this is also how as Africans we can rediscover ourselves with pride. We can go back to our roots to stand proudly and confront the world.” ☝️ You can (re-)read the full interview via link in the bio! 📸 Sophie Deiss #culturescapes #culturescapesmemories #culturescapes2023sahara #dance #saharadesert #africa #arts
🎉 Congratulations to @mohamed.sleiman.labat for winning the S+T+ARTS Prize Africa 2024! We are very happy to see that the artists present at Culturescapes 2023 are awarded and their work is recognized. The Sahrawi visual artist and writer was awarded for his installation "Sand Gardens", which uses sand as a medium to grow vegetables and herbs in a challenging desert environment using local low-tech accessible materials. “Developing such Sandoponic gardens is primarily to help the Saharwi families access nutritional food locally. The Sahrawi refugees are dependent on food aid whose nutritional value is limited. There are high levels of anemia and malnutrition among the Sahrawi. This artistic intervention responds to a critical problem using local low-tech accessible materials. The Sandoponic gardens save up huge amounts of water.” His film “DESERT PHOSfate” (2023), screened at Culturescapes 2023 Sahara, “weaves through the story of phosphate, exploring the multi-layered narrations about sand particles, plants, and human displacement. The film explores ways of telling about realities, metaphors, and poetics in the desert. It highlights connections between colonial practices, traces of anthropocentric mineral extractions, and the loss of indigenous ways of knowing and telling about the world.” ☝️You can access the video portrait of Mohamed Sleiman Labat in our Digital Space through the link in the bio. 📸 Mohamed Sleiman Labat, photo courtesy of the artist   #culturescapes2023sahara #environment #westernsahara #activism #africa #climatechange #culturescapesmemories
🔥 N’Goné Fall, a Senegalese curator and a new member of Culturescapes’ Artistic Advisory Board, has also joined the Documenta 16 Selection Committee. Here comes our double applause and joy! 👏🎉 N’Goné Fall accepted to became one of the six new AAB members to help us prepare Culturescapes 2025 Sahara. She is an independent curator and cultural policies specialist. She was the editorial director of the contemporary African art magazine Revue Noire from 1994 to 2001. She is the author of strategic plans for national and international institutions. She was a professor at the Senghor University, Egypt, lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, South Africa, and Abdou Moumouni University, Niger. She was the General Commissioner of the Africa2020 Season in France in 2020-21. “I never think of myself as being part of the African diaspora. I’m a Senegalese. Sometimes I’m based in Europe, sometimes I’m based on the [African] continent, sometimes I’m based in South Korea for three months. It is true my references are African. It is extremely important for me to share that African experience, African knowledge with the rest of the world. My role as a curator and as a writer would be to give access to that knowledge, so that while I am curating and writing, you can learn from the African experience… I was raised in a pan-African mindset in my family, and I strongly believe in the power of African cultures,” N’Goné Fall said in an interview with New Frame. 👂More news on the new Artistic Advisory Board to come! 📸 DR / Institut français @panafricandkr @documentainstitut #culturescapes #culturescapes2025sahara #arts #festival #panafrican #africa #sahara #saharadesert
☀️ Climate change is everyone’s business: you can be young or old, living in a developed or developing country, you can be white, Black, or any color of the rainbow. Climate change does not discriminate. I’m on the frontline of the climate fight because I was born an activist. And because I come from a community that lives and depends on nature. These are the words of Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim @hindououmar, a Chadian environmental activist with a unique perspective. Hindou, a Mbororo woman, is a member of an Indigenous nomadic Mbororo People within the wider Fulani People. She is the founder of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad (AFPAT), a group that actively participates in international climate and biodiversity negotiations. Last year, speaking to the #culturescapes Artistic Advisory Board member Yarri Kamara, she said: “I think women are the masters of the environment. They are knowledgeable about the details, the knowledge that we tend to neglect. When I do the participatory mapping, I am struck by how men give you the bigger reference points. They know where the rivers are, where the sacred forests are, where the mountains are. But when you ask the women, they will tell you exactly from where they collect food and water during droughts, where they shelter their children during a flood, they know which kind of medicinal plant can heal a specific illness. Women are also the ones who transmit knowledge to the generations, just through talking with their own children. That’s how I learned from my grandmother: “Do you know this plant?,” she would ask. “No, I don’t,” I would reply. “It maybe looks the same as this other one, but the difference is ABCD and you can use it for this, for that.” It is just a chat, but at the same time you are also learning knowledge that can be helpful for your entire life”. ☝🏼Read the full interview via link in the bio. 📸 Salma Khalil, courtesy of Terre Indigène. #environment #climatechange #climatejustice #africa #indigenous #activism #culturescapes2023sahara #culturescapesmemories
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