Meet the Dak’Art Biennale 2016 Award Winners

Dak’Art—Africa’s largest biennial—opened on May 3rd in Dakar, Senegal. Under the theme “re-enchantment”, curated by Simon Njami, the biennial invited 65 African artists from the continent as well as African artists based outside the continent to showcase their work—of which 3 were announced winners of the biennale.

Limoud Youssef was born in Cairo in 1964. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo and the Art Academy Düsseldort in Germany.

Youssef is the recipient of The Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor twelfth edition of the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar for his installation entitled Maqam (mausoleum of a saint). “The artist uses kitchen utensils, pieces of wood and sand to recreate a city without life. Everything in this town is like tombstones.”

Modupeola Fadugba is a Togo-born Nigerian multi-media artist whose practice includes painting, drawing and installations. The self-taught artist holds her M.Ed. (Harvard Graduate School of Education), as well as her MA, Economics, and BA, Chemical Engineering (University of Delaware).

Fadugba’s award-winning interactive game The People’s Algorithm is “an art installation focused on interventions in the national education and unemployment situation in Nigeria.” The installation won The Ministry of Culture and Communication award.

Arébénor Bassène works and lives in Dakar. Professor of Art since 2001, “writing takes on a double meaning in the Arebenor painting, a semantic meaning that arouses emotions in the viewer and graphic material that gives meaning to life and expression, an expression that casts a bridge between the past and the present”.

Bassène is the recipient of The African Monetary Union (UEMOA) award for his exhibited work entitled Text, Context and Pretext.