Binta Diaw is a Senegalese-Italian visual artist based in Milan, Italy.
2023 Biennial Year Find out more
Her research is aimed at the creation of installations of various dimensions and works commenting on social phenomena like migration and immigration, notions of identity as well as the Black female body experience.
Defying the Western gaze through a subversive sensibility, her practice questions perceptions of Italianness and Africanness seen as an extended symposium informed by her own cultural heritage and upbringing. Embracing visual art with a strongly intersectional, afro-diasporic and feminist methodology based on a physical personal experience, she is ultimately able to explore the multiple layers of her Blackness, her self as a social body and her position as a Black woman in a Western context.
Recent shows : Bellezza e Terrore: luoghi di colonialismi e fascismi, Museo Madre di Napoli, Napoli (Italy, 2022), The Land of Our Birth is a Woman, Centrale Fies, Dro (Italy, 2022), TooluXeer, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Dakar (Sénégal, 2022), Les tirésailleurs, Bungalow ChertLüdde, Berlin (Germany, 2022), Segni di Me, Casa Testori, Milan (Italy, 2022), The Recovery Plan, devoir de mémoire à l’italienne, InstitutCulturelitalien, Paris (France), A Living Experience of Feeling Listened, Lungomare, Bolzano (Italie, 2021), Nero Sangue, Museo MA*GA, The Recovery Plan, Gallarate (Italy, 2020), Soil is an inscribed body à Savvy Contemporary (Berlin, 2019).
Liverpool Biennial 2023
'Chorus of Soil' (2023)
Drawing on Diaw’s interest with hidden and forgotten histories and archival material, ‘Chorus of Soil’ is a large-scale reproduction of an 18th-century soil and seed map in the shape of the Brooks ship. Reimagined here at almost 1:1 scale, the Brooks sailed the passage from Liverpool via the West Coast of Africa, carrying over 5000 enslaved people to plantations in the Caribbean.
Diaw presents the installation as a temple dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives during the crossing of the Atlantic, drawing on archival materials relating to the Brooks ship. It is a memorial which reflects on the link between the Transatlantic slave trade and contemporary forms of migration and displacement of Black bodies. The installation
Drawing on Diaw’s interest with hidden and forgotten histories and archival material, ‘Chorus of Soil’ is a large-scale reproduction of an 18th-century soil and seed map in the shape of the Brooks ship. Reimagined here at almost 1:1 scale, the Brooks sailed the passage from Liverpool via the West Coast of Africa, carrying over 5000 enslaved people to plantations in the Caribbean. Diaw presents the installation as a temple dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives during the crossing of the Atlantic, drawing on archival materials relating to the Brooks ship. It is a memorial which reflects on the link between the Transatlantic slave trade and contemporary forms of migration and displacement of Black bodies. The installation is conceived as a space of remembrance where the boat is no longer a cargo ship but instead, a space of transformation through healing. Diaw references plantations but reclaims the labour of tending to the ground, reinterpreting it as a spiritual and emancipatory act. The work suggests possibilities of new life and different futures as new buds grow and bloom from the soil. The accompanying sound work layers the voices of a local man, woman and child, reciting Tobago-born Canadian poet M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem ‘Zong!’ (2008), a cycle of poems about the murder of more than 130 African people aboard the slave ship Zong in 1781. This infamous case highlighted the practice of throwing enslaved people overboard with the intention of maximising profit through claiming insurance against the loss. The ensuing legal case made the Zong a symbol of the Middle Passage and motivated the abolitionist movement. Together, the two elements of this ambitious installation speak to collective acts of mourning, hope, resistance, reparation, care and celebration of ancestral wisdom. The soil and seeds speak to the potential for new life, where new buds can grow, and healing can occur. Courtesy of the artist. This project was made possible thanks to the support of the Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust, Italian Council (2022), Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture, and the Italian Cultural Institute in London.
'Chorus of Soil' (2023)
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Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tobacco Warehouse. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty.
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Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tobacco Warehouse. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps
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Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tobacco Warehouse. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps
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Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tobacco Warehouse. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps
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Binta Diaw, Chorus of Soil, 2023. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tobacco Warehouse. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps
'Chorus of Soil' recipe cards designed by artist Alisha Friday
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Designed by Alisha Friday -
Designed by Alisha Friday
