LA SYMPHONIE DU GHETTO: Volume One. Natural Born Killer
Galleria Poggiali, Milano June 08 - September 19, 2022
With a new series of works on paper, Alexandre Diop, presents a heterogeneous symphony telling the story of people, both mythical and real, in search of redemption. This narration is deeply tied to the life story of Alexandre Diop born to a French mother and Senegalese father and raised in Paris. La Symphonie du Ghetto: Volume One. Natural Born Killer is Diop’s first show in Italy. The show serves as an introduction to Diop’s personal story and interpretation of the ghetto, a project that the artist has been working on for some time. The eleven works on paper represent a stream of consciousness in which he retraces the questions that disturb him most and, at the same time, stimulate his research. His works are responses to the social context he inhabits, frequently due to being an artist of African descent based in Europe, and his experience growing up with an immigration background in Paris, who moved first to Berlin and then to Vienna, where he lives and works. Central to the exhibition is Diop’s exploration of historical vs contemporary ideas of femininity and womanhood, contextualized by the often matriarchal and matrifocal society models prevalent across Africa and the Diaspora. The work that opens the series shows a pregnant woman as a symbolic icon of life and maternity in which the artist, partially at least, transfigures himself, reflecting on the meaning of having a son or a daughter in today’s society, which demands constant compromises. The work considers how humanity essentially aspires for freedom and shuns repression. Simultaneously, it presents a reflection on what it means to be born with or without privileges. The works feature a succession of historic figures such as the australopithecine Lucy discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and dated 3.2 million years ago, interspersed by portraits of figures the artist chose to represent his interpretation of the ghetto, a tribute to a life filled with challenges and marginalization. ▲