Photo Credit:-Jodi Bieber (Tshepang Dumelakgos)
The 12th edition of the “Bamako Encounters Photography Biennial, “the singular photographic and lens-based art biennale on the African continent” took place in Bamako, Mali, from November 30, 2019 to January 31, 2020. This edition of the Biennale was an opportunity to dedicate a “retrospective” exhibit in honor of the Silver jubilee celebration.
Founded in 1994, the African Biennale of Photography is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Mali with the support of the Institut Français. Since its inception, the Biennale has been the first and main international event dedicated to African photography and video on the continent, and remains an essential event for contemporary art.
Photo Credit-Emmanuele Adrianjafy (San titre)
This edition of the Biennale was conceived by Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and a curatorial team comprised of Aziza Harmel, Astrid Sokona Lepoultier and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, joined by artistic advisors Akinbode Akinbiyi, Seydou Camara and scenographer Cheick Diallo, with an emphasis to “listen carefully to remoteness, invisible matters, hitherto erased voices and images, as well as celebrating politics and poetics of (in)animate ecosystems, and on the role of collectives in African photographic practices, and the possibility of collectively telling our own stories through images”. It offered space, an invitation “to think about the artistic practice of photography as a stream of consciousness, as well as to consider photography beyond the tight corset of the photographic”.
The exhibition applied the notion of “the stream of consciousness as a metaphor for the flux of ideas, peoples, cultures that flow across and along with rivers like the Niger, Congo, Nile or Mississippi”.