Kemi Bassene comes to the Musée du Quai Branly! The museum welcomes the Senegalese artist from May 19 to September 26, 2021 as part of the Saison Africa2020 program, for a major installation called “The African Shed Laboratory”. A curator, art critic and photographer invited to make a work based on the museum’s photographic and audiovisual archives.

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Through this installation, Bassene tries to show the museum archives “are not just the relics of a body of works in African culture but a dynamic force of artistic creation and recreation”. And an issue at the very core of this work: transmission, here symbolized through the collection of photographs displayed, showing “learning the French language at various time periods and in diverse regions in Africa”, as well as in Asia. The artist also makes the most of the opportunity to apply “an artistic vision to already-existing works to reinterpret them through new and more contemporary productions and make known to a new public”.

Photographical works also dialoguing with different sound elements whether they are based on documentaries or music, they all come from the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly and set on very curious supports: school desks! They have been designed by architect-designer Cheikh Diallo’s Malian students as required by Bassene, enabling him to “call upon a particular aesthetic to his installation”, also depicting his idea of “transmission”.