Dak’Art 2024
Art at All Costs!
In the city of Dakar, the month of May is traditionally dedicated to Dak’Art, the Biennale of Contemporary African Art. Since 1992, when the first edition of this pan-African event was held, Senegal has asserted its identity as an African centre for culture and the arts. Indeed, as the first African city to host an international arts festival, the World Festival of Black Arts in 1966, Dakar is a symbol, a meeting place and a centre of African thought and art for all the continent’s art professionals and enthusiasts.
During the twenty years of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s presidency (1960–1980), the arts flourished in Senegal. The Négritude movement, whose forerunners included Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon Gontran-Damas, had been well-established since the beginning of the twentieth century and influenced the political and intellectual life of the Senegalese people. It gave democracy the impetus it needed to develop a creativity that prioritised the emancipation of Black people through a ‘*négro-afr (…)
