Forces of Art – Curating Dakar as an ‘art world city’

Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World is a thought provoking and wide ranging book bound to challenge assumptions and stimulate new ideas about how crucial art and culture are.

Bringing forward new understandings of the ways arts and culture shape societies across the world – Forces of Art is a research initiative in which fifteen independent teams of researchers set out to examine how art and culture exert their power to affect and transform their societies.

Among them, Dr Jenny Mbaye and co-author Dr Miranda Iossifidis contributed with Chapter 8: Curating Dakar as an ‘art world city’. This study explores the contours and dynamics that forge Dakar as a contemporary ‘art world city,’ inquiring into initiatives that operate at the crossroads of art, citizenship and society. In a context marked by a monopolistic role of the state, the study interrogates the practices of two independent art organizations, RAW Material Company and Kër Thiossane, and their different engagements with and through the city.

Set to be released on 26 November 2020, the book offers examples of the ways in which art brings together communities and takes the question of how to measure the impact of culture head on. From the role of cultural spaces and art events in Dakar, to digital program initiatives in South East Asia, to the experiences of Syrian diaspora artists in Istanbul and beyond, Forces of Art is a truly global effort that sheds new light on a critical debate about the value of the arts.

More information can be found here: https://forces-of-art.org/