Black Rock Senegal, the West African residency program launched in 2019 by Kehinde Wiley, has announced its next generation of fellows.
The group includes 16 artists of different practices from around the world, each of whom will take part in the program from August this year to May next. They will stay – in staggered increments of one to three months – at the Black Rock compound in the capital Dakar, which offers multi-storey apartments and private studios, as well as a spa, gym, swimming pool and a professional. food.
2023–24 Black Rock Senegal artists (clockwise from left): Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Chase Alexander Johnson, Christina Kimeze and Keith Tutt II. Photographers (clockwise from left): Toni Esposito, William Rouse, Leonardo Vandal and Joseph J. Pash Patrick. Courtesy of Black Rock Senegal.
Also on site are Wiley’s own work and living spaces. He collaborated with Senegalese architect Abib Djenne to design the amenity-filled building, which prioritizes creativity and community interaction above all else.
“There’s a level of quality that I demand,” Wiley said of the compound in an interview with vogue Last year. “I want to set the bar high for how you think of a West African experience.”
Indeed, for Wiley, the residency program offers more than space and time to its fellows; it also offers its guests a gateway to the continent on which it lives.
“Black Rock is the direct response to my desire to have an unchallenged relationship with Africa, filling a great void that I share with many African Americans,” he said. said when the program was created in 2019. “With this project, I wanted to explore my own personal relationship with Africa while inviting artists to do the same and galvanize the growing artistic and creative energies that exist in Africa to an increasing extent with the addition of diverse creative possibilities. , international.”
2023–24 Black Rock Senegal artists (clockwise from left): Nicolas Lambelet Coleman, Makhone Diop, Ardeshir Tabrizi and Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-Nti. Photos (clockwise from left): Charlie Wheeler (courtesy of
PM/AM Gallery), Malick Sadio, Claire Lopacki and Yeray Sabandar. Courtesy of Black Rock Senegal.
Among Black Rock’s 16 residents from 2023-2024 are painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, authors and composers, though most fall into the murky category of multidisciplinarity.
First-generation American artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, for example, transforms durags, hairbrushes and other symbols of black culture into powerful paintings and sculptures. Ange Frédéric Koffi, photographer and installation artist from Côte d’Ivoire, turns his lens to fleeting moments that speak to broader issues of displacement and coloniality in West Africa.
Samuel Nnorom from Nigeria assembles elaborate sculptures from foam balls covered in Ankara wax fabric and other textiles, while Australian Lilah Benetti makes what they call auto-ethnographic films that weave set of socio-cultural questions and reflections on the Black Queer experience.
2023–24 Black Rock Senegal artists (clockwise from left): Lilah Benetti, Ange-Frédéric Koffi, Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Anthony Akinbola. Photos (clockwise from left): Sara Lorusso, Matthieu Croizier, Vaughn D. Taylor and Elliot Jerome Brown Jr. Courtesy of Black Rock Senegal.
“I am struck by the exuberant, joyous, free and colorful character of so many works by selected visual artists that belie their serious and rigorous foundations,” said Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art who served on the Black Rock’s six-person selection committee.
Weinberg was joined on the committee by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, a figurative painter who was part of the inaugural group of Black Rock Fellows; Osei Bonsu, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern; Kimberly Drew, director of the Pace Gallery; Larry Ossei-Mensah, curator and co-founder of ARTNOIR; and Antwaun Sargent, writer, curator and director at Gagosian. Together, they chose the new Black Rock cohort from a pool of 1,434 applicants, a record number for the young program, which is entering its fourth year.
2023–24 Black Rock Senegal artists (clockwise from left): Timothy Yanick Hunter, Souleye Fall, Samuel Nnorom and Ousmane Bâ. Photos (clockwise from left): Solana Cain, Jessica Cumberbatch, @godson_elkizzy and Yuri. Courtesy of Black Rock Senegal.
“I served for decades on regional, national and international juries for artist awards and residencies at some of the most prestigious government agencies and private foundations,” Weinberg continued. “Never in my life have I seen applications from artists from broader geographic and cultural backgrounds and from such a wide range of media as with Black Rock Fellowship applications.”
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