Everyday Art and Popular Life at the Ecopole

A New Museum in Dakar, Senegal

Kinsey Katchka

In this paper, I reflect upon preliminary dissertation fieldwork conducted in Dakar, Senegal in Summer 1996. My interests (broadly stated) are twofold: (1) popular and urban art in Dakar, Senegal in Summer 1996. My interests (broadly stated) are twofold; (1) popular and urban art in Dakar, and (2) art institutions. After reviewing scholarship before leaving for Senegal, it seemed probable that these two interests were incompatible. Fortunately, and surprisingly, this was not the case.

In this paper I will first provide some context by introduing Dakar's dynamic creative community. Then, I will discuss the Ecopole de Dakar, the museum at the heart of my research; its urban context, and the discourse surrounding its establishment. Finally, I will discuss what have emerged as central issues and research questions to be pursued during dissertation research.

Despite the apparent lack of widely available financial and material resources in Dakar, the city's creative community continues to thrive. Lively artistic production is evident not only in museums, galleries, studios, and fine arts institutions, but also in homes, schools, markets, and streets (Figure 1). One may also see artwork in some combination of thse locations simultaneously; for instance, Figure 2 shows the interior space of a gallery on the Island of Gorée, off the coast of Dakar, whose exhibition space extends into the street outside (Figure 3).

Evidence of people's creativity and resoursefulness is likely to appear unexpectedly. In Figure 4, a creative individual has used the rubber remnant of flip-flop manufacturing to delineate the space of a gravesit in St. Louis, a city on the coast north of Dakar. Creative use of color and imagery apperas in public service announcements, sucha s a mural informing the public of medical conditions requireing treatment (Figure 5). A similarly informative and dynamic example is the AIDS awareness mobile, sponsored by a local development organization (Figure 6). This vehicle makes its rounds throughout the city of Dakar, undooubtedly fulfilling its objective of increasing awareness about the dangers of AIDS. The message on top of the vehicle states "We Don't Mess with Life," paintings on the windows illustrate (on one side) how a person contracts AIDS, and (on the other) the ways in which one does not.

My first experiences with art in Dakar took place during the Biennial An Festival (May 1996). Most, though not all, of the related activities took place in prominent fine arts museums and exhibition spaces downtown. After the Biennial events passed, I tried to find out more about a new museum I had found fleeting reference to before leaving for Senegal. The brief journal paragraph was not very informative, but it was enough to peak my interest.

This museum, the Ecopole de Dakar, has become the focus of my research. The Ecopole is based on the ecomuseum concept, which implies an attempt "to incorporate the museum into the real world, the familiar environment in which people live [...] and work..." (Bellaigue-Scalbert 1985: 194). While the Ecopole is certainly not the only museum in Dakar, a city with a long and rich creative history, it stands in marked contrast to Dakar's other museums, which were established during the colonial period, based on Western models, and located in more affluent neighborhoods (Figure 7) (1) Unlike the more established Musée de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) and Galerie Nationale d'Art, the Ecopole is located in a converted factory building, adjacent to a mechanics yard and a residential neighborhood with homes constructed from corrugated tin. The entrance to this neighborhood is marked by a large, painted image of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, a prominent local Muslim saint. As discussed elsewhere by Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts (1996), Bamba's image appears throughout Senegalese cities, and is often associated with the hardship, poverty, and resulting resourcefulness which characterizes urban life.

The Ecopole is one of the most recent projects of ENDA Tiers Monde.(2) This organization was established in 1972 in response to international development organizations' structural adjustment programs, which primarily focused on modernizing rural areas rather than addressing the problems of industrializing cities. Instead, ENDA focuses on grassroots projects in the urban environment, working with people directly involved with the popular urban economy.3 Urban populations worldwide have found creative approaches to difficult economic conditions, and it is this son of grass roots development that ENDA supports. In addition to economic development, ENDA is actively involved in AIDS and environmental awareness programs.

I first' learned of ENDA because it is a sponsor of a traveling exhibit, Ingdnieuse Afrique. This exhibition brings together items from throughout West Africa made from recycled and found materials. In the context of Ecopole objectives, this is significant, because the exhibition illustrates how creativity and resourcefulness play a central role in individual and collective daily life. This exhibit is on permanent display at the Ecopole.

The Ecopole's name itself suggests its objective: the prefix "eco-," meaning "habitat or environment, especially as a factor influencing the mode of life or the course of development;" and" pole" from "-polis," "a city in its ideal form as a community embodying the organization and fulfillment of...social relations" (Oxford English Dictionary), and also suggesting the element of selfsufficiency within a particular community. The Ecopole de Dakar, then, is intended to provide a forum encouraging creativity and resourcefulness, while reinforcing community ideals and bettering the urban environment.

As the nexus of many groups, individuals, and agendas, the Ecopole provides a forum for exchange among people in the community and other visitors. Preliminary research showed the complexity of this institution as a meeting place for a diverse urban population. While representatives of some groups integral to the museum are not always present, at any given time one is still likely to find a curious mix of people: a grade school class and school teacher, neighborhood children, several artists-inresidence, a development worker, a tourist, a researcher. At Children's Day, a rather large-scale Ecopole event that took place during my stay (nearly 100 children took part), all the groups I mentioned were represented, with notable addition of a Senegalese television station's camera crew.

However, the diversity of participants may not seem unusual given the Ecopole's educational programs and exhibitions, which are equally diverse: a room off the center courtyard shows an exhibit of building models and contemporary Zairian popular painting (Figure 8). The paintings hung on the wall are by the well-known artist Cheri Samba (cf. Jewsiewicki 1995), and portray Zairian schoolchildren in class, in keeping with the Ecopole's orientation towards children and education. Also in this room, a model recreates the mosque at Touba, the regional center for the Muslim faith. Throughout the

Ecopole, one finds local children's artwork reflecting health concerns such as AIDS awareness (Figure 9), and environmental concerns, such as pollution (Figure 10). The lng~nieuse Afrique exhibit shows art made throughout West Africa from found materials, including wire toys and aluminum/comic strip briefcases. One finds items made of woven plastic shopping bags, including hats, baskets, rope, and purses; and all of this with Disney and other cartoon characters painted on the walls as a backdrop.

It is important to note the presence of children and their artwork at the Ecopole. The Ecopole's primary targeted audience is local children, and one of the museum's goals is to include them and their artwork in exhibitions and programs. This is in keeping with principles supported by museum professionals concerned with the development of museums in Senegal and throughout West Africa. Appearing in a 1995 issue of the West African Museum Programme Bulletin, these principles include:

· Creating an "informal dimension" to museum activities to facilitate relations of a diverse public.

· Presenting the museum as a "cultural and educational resource"

· Diversifying means of expression in exhibitions (using multi-media such as audio and video)

· Increasing cooperation between schools and museums (Camara et al. 1995: 43)

By following these steps, museum professionals hope to integrate urban culture into the surrounding sphere of activity "in order to reflect the reality and dynamics of contemporary culture" (Ardouin 1995: 43). Ecopole is clearly a step in this direction.

The concept of a museum integrated into the surrounding community may seem ambiguous to some. In some ways, I think using the term "museum" calls forth certain assumptions in the minds of those of us who grew up in the US or Europe. In an effort to clarify, I find it helpful to think of the Ecopole as what we would call a community arts center. It includes gallery and exhibition space, workshops, studios, classes, artwork for sale and children's art programs. The overall experience tends to be more experiential and participatory, rather than contemplative (which may reflect the way art is experienced in West Africa), and highlights the more interactive role of art and its creation in daily life.

What turned out to be the most striking aspect of my research was that art, development, and education are very much connected in Dakar, and clearly intersect at the Ecopole. In fact, spending time at the Ecopole and the people associated with it, drew me into an even broader network of artists, museums, and creativity than I could have anticipated. A study of the Ecopole, then, provides a window on the intersection between myriad groups and interests--local, national, and global--which are inextricably linked by the museum's art, exhibitions, studios, programs, and policy.

I was also interested to learn that the role of art and artists in the community is distinctly proactive. This is aftned by the attention given to children, art and education throughout Dakar, and particularly interesting in the context of community and development. Artists and teachers clearly connect art to the bettering of individual and collective urban life, a concept which is reiterated in the lngdnieuse Afrique exhibition catalogue, which states that artwork itself is not the only aspect of art: in Africa; museums are regarded as potential development tools with broader social and cultural objectives than in Western practice (Ferera 1995). Ecopole is an ideal place for studying the concept of the museum as a tool in development, especially given that (1) ENDA, an urban development organization, so actively supports the arts in Dakar and is the Ecopole's parent institution; and (2) Ecopole is funded in part by UNESCO and the Senegalese Ministry of Culture.

Despite the fact that scholarship addressing public art and institutions is perhaps an unorthodox reference for the study of African art, I find it useful due to its emphasis on the interaction of community and creativity, and since community is a central aspect of art in Dakar. I didn't realize the full relevance of the public aspect until my return home from Senegal, when I stumbled upon a book whose title, Culture in Action, intrigued me. In this volume, which documents a Chicago public art program, the curator, Mary Jane Jacob, states that

Throughout the program, its organizers believed that discourse and dialogue around the issues of public art-making were as important as the projects themselves [...] Ultimately, "Culture in Action" (the program) was not designed to provide answers, but to raise questions; not an attempt to limit the definition of "audience" or "public" or "sculpture", but to extend those definitions...[this process revealed] evidence of the need to develop new methods and new language to mirror new ways of making art (Jacob et al 1995: 13).

I cite this entire passage because it seems equally to illuminate the dialogue surrounding the establishment of the Ecopole de Dakar and its emphasis on process. Like the Chicago project, the Ecopole serves as a conduit between a particular community and the more diverse audiences that make up the general public[...] The ideas born and generated by artist-community interaction will, it is hoped, filter into the larger culture (Jacob et al 1995: 13).

This approach to Dakar's creative community has thus far proved helpful and effective in understanding the intersection of various domains of experience in an inclusive, interdependent community. The Ecopole was designed with respect to a plurality of domains: family, educational, professional, associational, political and imaginary (in Bellaigue-Scalbert 1985: 194). As a public institution, Ecopole is a significant link between these different domains, providing a central forum to a city-wide network of art, culture, and education.

In conclusion, I highlight key points and issues for my continuing research. First, what I've just recounted suggests some of the important and striking features of Dakar's extensive creative network, using words such as "integration," "dynamics" and "change." These are terms that have not always been commonly associated with studies of African art, which, even in recent years, have suggested the importance of preservation, tradition and heritage. In studying the Ecopole and the art highlighted there, a more dynamic perspective of art and heritage emerges, and popular art must be acknowledged as integral to broader creative communities. The recent institutionalization of popular art at the Ecopole calls for a reevaluation of ~ the significance of the "popular."

Second, given that this type of popular art and recycling has been present in West African cities for quite some time, why has this art only recently become a focus of interest for the government and development organizations? Why has popular art and creativity been institutionalized in a museum setting, and deemed "art"? What particular circumstances in relation to the nation's and city's history has brought this to the fore of policy-making? My continuing research will take this important historical aspect into consideration.

While information is available on the Ecopole from an official standpoint, provided in print media, in my research I will also seek the point of view of people participating in museum activities--artists, children, teachers, Ecopole activity organizers-who also consider the Ecopole an important and innovative place, and discuss art in more immediate terms of their own experience, rather than simply in terms of national development. This perspective will emerge through the numerous voices I plan to bring into my dissertation research, when I will be able to spend extended periods of time with people in the museum and the surrounding community.

This paper has shown that Ecopole de Dakar serves as a contact point between the people and the state, economy and society, cities and citizens, and provides a "meaningful" structure accommodating the local-global dynamics that are a part of everyday reality. With these programs and exhibitions, the Ecopole suggests art and urban experience as multifaceted as its participants and creators. This museum represents the institutionalization of the "popular" or everyday, giving credence and voice to everyday an and popular life.

Endnotes

1 While popular art in a centralized forum such as the Ecopole is a relatively recent development, the perception of art as important to development and life is not. At a political level, Senegal's first president, L~opold S. Senghor, strongly advocated support for the arts (Senghor 1966). Senghor's cultural policies, however, provided for an fnstitutions (both museums and schools) based on Western models. These institutions, still officially active today, are seldom frequented by the general public, presumably because they evolved from experience detached from local life.

2 Environment and Development in the Third World.

3 Some scholars refer to the "popular economy" as the "informal sector."

Works Cited

Ardouin, Claude Daniel & Emmanuel Arinze. 1995. Museums & the Community in West Africa. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press/West African Museum Programme. Bellaigue-Scalbert, Mathilde. 1985. "Actors in the Real World." Museum 38(4): 194-97.

Camara, Abdoulaye, et al. 1995. "The museum & its community: Workshop at the Mus6e Historique de Gor6e, 18 mai 1993." WAMP Bulletin 6: 38~45.

Ferera, Lisette, ed. 1994. lngdnieuse Afrique: Artisans de la rdcupdration et du recyclage. Qu6bec: Editions Fides and Mus6e de la Civilisation. Jacob, Mary Jane; Michael Brenson; and Eva M. Olson. 1995. Culture in Action. Seattle: Bay Press.

Roberts, Allen. 1996. "The Ironies of System D," in Recycled Reseen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap. C. Cerny and S. Seriff eds. New York: Harry Abrams for the Museum of International Folk Art.

Senghor, Leopold. 1966. Colloque sur l 'art ndgre: "Fonction et signification de l'art negro-africain dans la vie des peuple et pour le peuple." Paris: Cooperation & Development 10.in Recycled Reseen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap. C. Cerny and S. Seriff eds. New York: Harry Abrams for the Museum of International Folk Art.