This group exhibition combines embroidery and weaving, two artistic crafts in which Senegal excels, with other artistic disciplines and mediums of contemporary creation such as painting, photography, or installation. The exhibition invites visitors to travel through time and across landscapes, materials, and techniques, revealing ingenious savoir-faire applied to leather, wool, silk, raffia, cotton, synthetic materials, etc. The thematic tours map out certain Senegalese skills: weaving and embroidery are thus complemented by a section on indigo dyeing—a deeply sustainable practice, which is particularly widespread in Senegal and continues to be modernised by a young generation of passionate creators—and a focus on Casamance, the cradle of the Manjak pagne tissé tradition. Other regional crafts from Senegal are also highlighted, notably those from Saint-Louis, Cayor, and Sine-Saloum.

The exhibition brings together some forty works and installations by close to thirty contemporary artists and craftspeople from Senegal, Mali, South Africa, Bolivia, and France. Many of these pieces were produced specifically for the event, some in collaboration with le19M’s Maisons d’art, while others are on loan from artists, public institutions, or private collections. Some collaborative projects create bridges between Aubervilliers and Dakar, such as the two tapestries commissioned from the Manufactures Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs in Thiès, the project by Julian Farade and the embroiderers of Ngaye Mekhe, or the collaboration between Maison Montex and the Kër Thiossane cultural centre.

To celebrate intergenerational transmission and the linkages between heritage and the contemporary world, the exhibition presents the works of five artists referred to as “the moderns”: Alioune Badiane, Viyé Diba, Kalidou Kassé, Souleymane Keita, and Abdoulaye Ndoye. Their long careers have helped to shape the trajectory of art in Senegal, particularly in the use of textiles in their practices. Their works will be shown successively in the exhibition for 2 weeks each.