Our Foreign Agenda: The European Curator and the Senegalese Diaspora Artist


In cooperation with Espace Timtimol, sponsored by the German Foreign Office

In the framework of the African Biennale Dak'Art under Dak'Art OFF, in May 2012 Swarowsky put on stage a collaboration with the Berlin-based Senegalese artist Mansour Ciss: the lecture-performance Our Foreign Agenda: The European Curator and the Senegalese Artist. This self-deprecating satire, a fictitious dialogue between African diaspora artists, represented by Ciss, and the Berlin curator Daniela Swarowsky, representing Europe, provided an occasion to reflect about the international and local art scene and the role of Europe within them, and to gauge mutual clichés and imaginations of the "Other."

However, the actual performance took a different turn. The event quickly departed from the script of an ironical dialogue between Swarowsky and Ciss and turned into an emotional and at times heated discussion between Ciss and the audience about the role of artists and the meaning of art in the conflictual field between global entanglement and national rootedness. Who defines African art? Where are the African intellectuals? Does real dialog exist?