BINTA DIAW
IL PEUT PLEURER DU CIEL
Torino, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
21 June – 22 October 2024
Ph. Giorgio Perottino. Courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino
Exhibition co-organized and co-produced by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Associazione Genesi, as part of the third edition of Progetti Genesi. Art and Human Rights promoted by the same association
Curated by Ilaria Bernardi
The project is conceived as a multisensorial immersion into the complexities of migration and its history between two continents: Africa and Europe. Migration, a politically and economically urgent issue, is also a profoundly philosophical one, in which identity, heritage, and imagination are intertwined, as well as it is linked to the concept of the diaspora, which characterizes the background of the artist, born in Italy to Senegalese parents.
At the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Binta Diaw has created an immersive installation that addresses the theme of migration, centered on the migrant body and its sensitivity to nature and the surrounding culture. Filmed in Yarakh, Senegal and conceived of as a visual meditation on the ocean, a video is projected onto the back wall of the gallery. The camera focuses on the water and the waves that form offshore. Lampedusa—an island at the crossroads between two continents—appears in the distance. A dark mass, shaped like a rectangle, oscillates against the winds and waters. This form is revealed to be a rug woven out of dirt, underlining the semantic richness of the phrase “this is my land”—referring to the place that we either choose for ourselves or is chosen for us, particularly in relation to Africa and its colonial history. On the ground are several small identical sculptures made out of dirt, placed upon two large sheets of plastic recalling the rug in the video as well as ocean pollution. Altogether, the installation speaks to the way in which people and their stories are reduced to mere numbers and seen as indistinguishable upon their arrival in Europe.
The artist explains, “I filmed this video in the outlying district of Yarakh in Dakar, in the attempt to draw attention to the site of departure, and to the departure itself, of the people who decide to leave from that point. By now, migration has been generalized into a single image: disembarkment and invasion. But we don’t ask ourselves and we don’t stop to think about their starting point, about the suffering that they come from, and above all, how they were able to face their journey. The video is therefore a metaphor of the body awaiting its fate: an invitation from the ocean that welcomes the body into its waters until it is thrown out. The rug—long associated with notions of hospitality and spirituality in some cultures—becomes a metaphor for the migrant body, of the body in movement—not only from one place to another, but also from a physical and mental state to another.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph on the artist, edited by Ilaria Bernardi, published by Silvana Editoriale, and produced by Associazione Genesi. The publication is the first survey of the artist’s work to date.