9 More Weeks

6.

Mame-Diarra Niang

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The matter of self

Black Hole was the title of Mame-Diarra Niang’s August 2017

residency at Stevenson Johannesburg’s fifth-floor space. For
those who know the artist mainly as a photographer, this was an
unexpected step – the key materials were sound, light, texture
and smell. For a month, Niang created and sustained a sensory
interstice in a city of relentless pacing.
Her previous bodies of work are titled Dolorosa, Ethéré,
Sahel Gris, At the Wall and Metropolis. While the first is
drawing and the second is largely performative, the last three
are chapters in a photographic trilogy. Sahel Gris captures a
parched and rural landscape – the Encyclopaedia Britannica
defines the Sahel as a ‘transitional zone’. At the Wall traces
the boundaries and thresholds of urbanised living, and in
Metropolis, a hyper-industrialised city is abstracted into bracing
turrets of line and colour. Niang’s treatment of terrain is in the
service of what she terms the ‘plasticity of territory’. Her works
treat place as something personal and intimate. According to
John Szarkowski’s dichotomy between ‘mirrors and windows’
(mentioned in this book’s conversation with Guy Tillim), Niang
would be a ‘mirror’ artist. The locations the images are taken in
have little to do with their import; entire geographic features are
repurposed as reflections of the artist’s psyche. Niang states:
‘My duty as a human and as a woman is to tell my story. When I
started with my photography I was so embarrassed when people
told me it was about Dakar or Johannesburg, because that was
not what I was trying to do with it. It’s about what I am.’
Since Niang is French-speaking and based in Paris, the
following conversation has three voices and takes place over the
internet. In the background is the work of two transcribers and
two sessions of translation – the initial recordings included even

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the movements of Niang’s cat. The conversation is multifarious Sinazo Chiya & Federica Angelucci:

and haphazard, the appropriate form for an artist who cuts Last year you spent a few weeks on a residency at
through essentialist delineations of thought. In her statement Stevenson’s fifth-floor space in Johannesburg. How do
for Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and you look back on that period? From the outside, your
Video Art, she reiterates, ‘As any territory possesses borders, video installation – envisaged as a chapter in a larger
the act of framing becomes a fundamental gesture. As a result, project titled Since Time Is Distance in Space – seemed
notions of language and representation begin to collapse. In like quite a radical shift.
my practice, the visible is not enough, in looking beyond the
obvious, my process concentrates strictly on observing and Mame-Diarra Niang:

engaging with the matter of self.’ I try to find the correct language to say what I want to say at any
Niang chooses the descriptor of artist, not photographer, given time. I had been focused on my photography recently, in
because her choice of medium is tangential, not definitive. particular the trilogy of Sahel Gris, At the Wall and Metropolis,
Whether she uses moving images, soil or soundscapes, her but before that I was doing installation and performance. You
position is from a commodious solipsism – introspection made know I used to make drawings? Maybe the shift was for me to
communal. Her ‘mirror’ resembles not glass but a stream. accept that my practice is all these things. For a while that was
She states: ‘I wanted to paint a picture for everyone, including photography because of the distance it allows. I lost my father,
myself, in which I would feel at ease. An open-ended picture, and I went back to Senegal with only my camera. It allowed me
in which the viewer would have an idea of what is happening to have a conversation between myself and what had happened
without my saying, “That’s the way it is.”’ in my life. It was a protective shell.
In Since Time Is Distance in Space, the ongoing video
installation of which Black Hole is a chapter, Niang fabricated With the Black Hole residency, you brought together
satellite imagery using soap-foam drying on concrete – among multiple video screens, sound and scent in an immersive
other elements – to communicate a process of simultaneously environment. Had you worked with sound before?
going outward and inward. She exercises agency through a
transposition of self onto the cosmos – further description is I always had a hunger for music, but had never used it in my
imposition. And so, in her own words … work. I wasn’t sure how I would do it, using an iPad and music
controller, but I had a feeling I could. My work is like a collage
of myself. As I work through my past, I come to understand
more about myself. That was what I was trying to do with
this installation.

During the residency, you described your work as your

‘compass’, a way to mediate between your internal

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universe and the external world. It is paradoxical as, in which the viewer would have an idea of what is happening
in Since Time Is Distance in Space, the viewer loses all without my saying, ‘That’s the way it is.’
points of reference, while you try to come to terms with
your past, to build a map. How do you see the audience relating to the ‘collage of
yourself’, to your territory?
Yes, it’s true. It is a topographical work but instead of mapping
landscapes or places I try to map archetypes, with the aim of I think we all share a reality. Sometimes we are on our own
placing myself within my own history and narrative. Since Time Is and sometimes we have to share something; it is a conversation
Distance in Space does not exist without Metropolis. Metropolis between frames. What is interesting for me is that you add your
does not exist without At the Wall. At the Wall does not exist experience to that moment in my space. You get something
without Sahel Gris. The extremes almost touch each other. from me, and you also add something that I don’t know. For
example, when you came, Sinazo, together with Milisuthando
The space of Metropolis seems to me less intimate than Bongela, Kwanele Sosibo and Zaza Hlalethwa from the Mail
the space one experiences in the video installation, which & Guardian, you were the first visitors I had in that space – we
feels deeper inside your head. had an interesting conversation, the kind of moment where
we let go of things and find ourselves vulnerable. A moment
What if the Black Hole ‘chapter’ was an escape from Metropolis, of truth, a moment that allows us to shift something in our
a way out instead of a way in? Sometimes I am not sure whether minds, our energy. If you remember, I was feeling so low, alone
we have moved outward or deeper inward. in Johannesburg … but your visit made me understand the
importance of what I was doing. It gave me the energy to make
I was under the impression that we had moved deeper the right change, the right move.
inside; it is an integration of the photographic series on
the territory as identity, and plunges fully into abstraction. I find your notion of territory as opposed to identity
very interesting. Territory suggests something that is
I am interested in your idea because it belongs to you, really. meant to be walked on or through; there isn’t a singular
It is your impression, what you experienced. I think I set perspective – you move and change and everything
something in motion and then relinquished control over it; changes around you.
in fact, I might not have set it in motion consciously. My first
studies were in theatre, and I wanted to do scenography. I want That’s it! The very idea of identity sets one in a single space
to build, to put a territory back together – my territory. What and does not allow one to renew oneself; it’s as if having an
would be the doings of this territory, the sound or scent of this identity and naming it denies you the possibility of changing.
territory? I wanted to paint a picture for everyone, including Territory, on the other hand, allows for fluidity: you constantly
myself, in which I would feel at ease. An open-ended picture, discover who you are. A territory provides paths, whereas

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an identity fixes you in one place, contains you and provides see me naked, and I realised that I didn’t care, that I wanted to
limits … When you move, both physically and metaphorically, be seen in this territory, in this continent.
you end up being much more than the set of assumptions
inherited at the beginning of your journey. What are you? Could we say that for a time you were trying to hide and
What is your shape? What is this territory? at some point you came back, you stopped hiding?

Would you describe the way you work as intuitive? Yes, that’s it. I stopped hiding when it became unbearable
for me. But I still had the need to be discreet. How to reveal
Yes, it’s always intuitive and has always been like that. I don’t everything about myself and still keep a part secret?
force myself, ever. When I think too much about what I’m doing,
it becomes more about my ego. I start wanting to become the Can you talk about what you had been hiding from?
queen of the world and it doesn’t make sense because I am the
queen of my world. That’s why I just need to go with my own There was a point where I no longer felt connected with my
creation and not build something in opposition to something work … I was in Dakar and I felt so depressed. It was the time of
else, for example. the Dakar biennale in 2016, and the whole art world was in my
city. All these people I didn’t want to see or be with were in my
I’m curious about how the body has shifted in your work. space, in my town where I grew up. So I didn’t want to go out,
Previously, in your photographic work, there would be and I started making this work from my rooftop. I just wanted
a small figure and a big environmental context. Now we to do something with my body and my anger. I was angry with
are seeing an absence of figures or just the environment all these people; you know when you want to go somewhere and
transformed – it’s very abstract – and then we see close- rest, and then all these people that you ran away from in Paris
ups of faces moving, the body and motion, taking up and elsewhere in the world start to show up. Right at the end of
the whole frame. the world, and you are just like, ‘No, no, no. I need space to rest,
I need a space where I can be true and where there’s no question
You know, when I made Since Time Is Distance in Space, I of power or the art market.’ It was like these people were acting
understood something in relation to those small characters on my ego and this was my defence mechanism.
from At the Wall and Metropolis. For a long time I’d been telling
myself, ‘Those characters hold the wall and are framed by the It wasn’t a healthy space to be in.
wall.’ Now I’m thinking that in fact I wanted to be seen by those
characters. It’s me they are looking at, not the wall; they are No. I was living in the house that my father left me, a huge
asking for my attention. During the shooting of the videos for unfinished house with not too much furniture inside. It’s a life that
the installation, I was working on my terrace and there were I really love and no one knows that I live like that, with nothing.
people doing construction work around; some of them would I was on my rooftop and I started playing with this thing that my

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father left me, a lampshade. I started playing with my shadow and My Parisian style! Hahaha. I don’t know … I really love brutalist
that started something. I started feeling like myself. architecture, images from NASA – a ‘cold’ aesthetic.

It’s like your territory, this place that was so intimate to Can you elaborate on your attraction towards images of
you, was invaded. So you made a new territory inside space, the moon?
yourself or inside this environment of yours?
There is a documentary called Universe that was made before
Yeah. There was so much anger because at the previous biennale the lunar landing; its aim was to make the public understand
when I did my performance … I don’t know if you followed the that something could exist without anyone having been there.
story of what happened with all the homosexual artists who How do we recreate an environment through collected data,
exhibited their works during the biennale in 2014? using images to illustrate a place where no one has ever been?
When the lunar landing happened, the public believed that the
Is that when the exhibition on homosexuality at the Raw moon had to look like it did in the documentary – it was what
Material Company got shut down? they expected. I do something similar when I include images
from satellites and NASA; I try to prepare the viewer to imagine
Yes. I had some fear about staying in Dakar after that, and something not really accessible visually. How can we think
moved back to France. I didn’t go back for about two years. about memory, the territory as identity? I offer clues to try to
When I returned to Dakar for the first time after this, at the understand, visualise something that is inherently abstract.
time of the 2016 biennale, it was like I came back at the same I researched satellites and GPS systems and I realised that
moment as when I left, with all this insecurity. For the first time I there is no such a thing as a full picture of Earth: the images
was scared of people. I don’t know … I just needed to find a new of the globe that we have are the result of stitching together
space and present my body like a statement to say that this is my square or rectangular images from satellites. When we search
territory. There was a sort of healing I had to go through in my for ‘planet Earth’ on Google images, what we get are 3D
home and within my own personal temple, my body. And indeed reconstructions, but we don’t question the specifics of the visual
this was the last character I needed to bring to the work. It was we are looking at. These are examples of how it is possible to
as if those characters that were there were reminding me that suggest that something exists without having real proof of it.
I had to look at myself, that I had to let it out, that I had to take The classic image we see of the planet Jupiter has the same
a risk and erase the walls. The walls came down … it was like clouds and atmospheric conglomerates in the usual spots – at
I was taking shape. some point I started questioning whether what we were shown
was true or a fabrication. I also questioned what I think I know
What role do aesthetics play in your work when so much about historical colonisation and space colonisation: what do I
of it is based on healing and your own personal journey? know by direct experience, and what do I know is true because
Where does beauty come in? it has been presented to me as such? First-hand, I have only

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experienced Earth as flat, while I have been told and shown it It is a bit of a paradox – the fact that you are a mixed
is a sphere. How much can I trust what has been shown to me? child does not protect you. You are outside; you are a
I started questioning everything and building an archive of my stranger, a foreigner who comes and takes photograph of
own inner knowledge. things that have no historical memory for you but a lot
The conquest of space is something spectacular; my for someone else. How do you explain that you are using
personal conquest is the conquest of my inner world, which this as part of a bigger composition that has nothing
shapes my external reality very deeply. When I was a child to do with actual history?
I was attracted to astronomy; I have always been fascinated
by the stars and other phenomena in space that were either You know, it is like when you taste a fruit, hmm, this fruit
unknown or mysterious. I have always related them to myself; reminds me of an apple, whereas it was actually a kiwi or a
the link I see between my inner world and faraway space is kaki. It is like a taste of déjà vu. I experiment with these kinds
that they are both impalpable. The starlight that we see burned of déjà vu. You said it: I come from outside, I am mixed; when
millions of years ago and we only perceive it now. When we I am here I am not part of France, and when I am there I don’t
look at the sky we look at the past; in the same way our inner belong either. The only place where I can find myself is within
world is made of our ancestral memory. Our cellular memory myself. That is what I look for in landscapes. When I find my
projects the past into our present. vision, something that puts me at ease, that’s it – I am back on
my path. I am not trying to look for someone’s history, I am
Has political work ever appealed to you? trying to find my own shape in a space where I will never
be welcomed as home.
I’m talking about myself and that is political. I’m a statement – So when someone says I have to bring a historical point of
I’m mixed, I’m lesbian. My duty as a human and as a woman view, I say: but who said that? It interests you but not me; it is
is to tell my story. When I started with my photography I was not the purpose of my work. At the same time that person’s point
so embarrassed when people told me it was about Dakar or of view is very important in relation to their own journey. And
Johannesburg, because that was not what I was trying to do this is what interests me today, to see what the viewer brings to
with it. It’s about what I am. Someone who was raised by a my work. I am interested in what I don’t know, what belongs to
woman, my mother. I’m much darker than my mother, who is you, to your memory and your experience. It is as if I were an
mixed. My grandmother is white. My aunt is Korean and my architect building the structure and people entering the building
father is Black. My family made peace and I am making peace. will each create their own apartment with their own story in it.
So this is political, to be all these things and try to collage I can’t know what they will bring inside.
your life and say, ‘I’m okay with what I am’. Sometimes I’m
the oppressor, sometimes I’m the victim, sometimes both. In your series Dolorosa you worked with digital collages
I’m one with what I am. of 19th-century anatomical drawings.

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I worked on this piece while I was sick; the illness manifested try to find my form. One day I will say that I am Senegalese
subsequent to a loss and I felt overwhelmed. I was terrified and another day I will say no, I am not that at all. Suddenly I
and angry as my body seemed to be rebelling against me. The am South African. Because South Africa gave me my shape,
sequence starts with a digital collage, an anatomical drawing of because you made me travel to South Africa, and this brought
the heart, which then morphs into other organs. All the drawings me a new memory that I would identify with. How can I say
I used describe a kind of fear … I needed to face my monsters I come from one space if, for me, being here is always
but they were inaccessible, so I made them somehow visible. The present in what I am?
collages are portraits of monsters brought to the surface, in the
guise of a map. Another territory, I guess. With all your works, it’s feels like you’re grafting yourself
into the environment because there’s something that
There is a word you use, ‘radicant’, that seems very you want to figure out or explore. Metropolis was about
important in understanding your work. being in Joburg, but changed from how it appears into
something very personal.
It refers to a plant that is at home wherever it is; it can take root
anywhere. It doesn’t have a designated space, a specific land or Yes, because the work is about my experience of Joburg. I’m so
physical territory like a country or a city. It is a nomadic plant in love with Joburg. Every time I’m in that city I take all these
that finds its form in wandering, like herbs that grow in the forms, these colours … It makes me angry about a lot of things.
concrete. For me the work needs to be ‘radicant’ like this. I never experienced what you experienced. It broke my heart
and that’s why Metropolis has beautiful colours, but feels a bit
In this sense, in your work, you travel between Africa and suffocating. That was my experience, with these huge walls in
something else. You say there is a part of you that has a Johannesburg. I did the work inside cars or buildings because
European perspective and another part that is African – I could not work in the streets.
and Africa is in any case part of the world, one cannot
isolate it. We have spoken a lot about territory. Which place do you
connect with the most?
Exactly. When you speak of ‘radicant’, it makes me think of
myself when I was little and left France to live in Ivory Coast, Where I am. I don’t try to find a space or population or history
without my mother, and then I came back and left again. inside the city. I try to find myself in these territories. So when
Really, I can’t forget that originally I was born in France. I did Metropolis, I looked with my own eyes. It’s not a project
When I arrived on the African photographic scene, people about fear or apartheid. While I was making the work I was with
would ask me to position myself in terms of identity. Often I a friend who was my driver and she was always trying to explain
am called Senegalese, but I am not Senegalese! Or at least not the histories of this building or that, and I always said, ‘Oh no,
only Senegalese. This is why my work is nomadic. I always don’t speak to me about that.’ I had to find my look, my eyes,

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how I feel. I started taking some photographs and they were

not at all interesting. For a while I was stuck in Braamfontein.
I was scared, you know, and then one day things shifted. That
day I took these pictures on Juta Street. And when I saw them
I knew from the language of the work that it was my eyes, it
was my look, it was my way to see the world, the colours, the
angles. It was not about the history, the violence; it was how I
see the world and how I see myself inside the city, the country.
I could finally be myself in Johannesburg. Indeed, it is always
like that. It is a ‘space odyssey’, but through setting out to
discover another territory I am able to discover myself.

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