Enfants de nuit © Sada Tangara
The street children of Dakar live in or pass through Man-Keneen-Ki (“me-the other” in Wolof), a home-cum-art school which enables them to create multidisciplinary works which bring our the the aesthetic side of poverty - a unique artistic act. From Dakar to Amsterdam, from Lisbon to Buenos Aires, from Paris to Rome, these creative works have been gradually exhibited at contemporary art centres or events, each time questioning the ambient certitude and tranquillity, and each time rekindling philosophical debates.
The exhibition - performance, Enfants de Nuit, created for the Festival, includes the work of eighteen young artists aged from nine to twenty-five, all of whom come from the Man-Keneen-Ki School and LFKs. The audience moves around in darkness. The spectators light their own paths with an electric torch, discovering the works and their authors. There is photography, video, theatre, dance, painting, literature, poetry… What we see is the result of lengthy underground work, its own protagonists bringing out all that is positive in a part of the world that is looked down upon. It’s not a manifesto, it’ s not a plea. It is an artistic act from a place where we most likely thought nothing existed.