Musée du Quai Branly, Paris , France
19 May 2021 - 26 Sep 2021
As part of the Africa2020 Season, the museum invites the artist Kemi Bassene to create a work from the photographic and audiovisual archives kept there.
Entitled The New African Shed Laboratory, Kemi Bassene’s project attempts to demonstrate that museum archives are not only relics of an African cultural body but also a dynamic of artistic creation and recreation. The overlap and continuity between music and visual arts, the relationship between art and politics, are also questions that nourish his work, as well as that of the new contemporary African museography. How to create lasting works that underline the relationship, the feeling of belonging between cultures of origin, museum collections and the public? This installation thus goes beyond questioning the past and attempts to imprint the future and open an educational dialogue.
The event will be held at the music box of the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.
Kémi Bassène is a photographer, musicologist and critic who explores fragments of African cultures to identify intersections with cultures outside Africa and the ways Africans are viewed internationally.