Lab’s director integrates Talibé artwork into own painting
Sara Downham-Lotto, abstract painter and founding director of Arts Lab, has been based in Senegal for the last few months. Combining travel, research and voluntary arts facilitation for local groups, she has also made the time to reconnect with her own practice. Last November she held an artist residency at Le Château, Centre Culturel Diagn’Art in Saint-Louis, and this month, she’s been based at Village des Arts in Dakar, creating some of her best work to date.
If you look carefully at Sara’s Talibé Triptych and Little by Little the Bird Builds the Nest series, you will see clues as to how and where these paintings were started; all began as the work of talibé children, and makes for a great story:
‘In November-December 2021, I volunteered at the Maison de la Gare* in Saint-Louis, facilitating drawing and painting with talibé boys. Unpacking my suitcase of paint brushes, paper, paints and pastels, the excitement and eagerness to get stuck in was overwhelming. ‘Ndank ndank’ (slowly slowly in Wolof). ‘There’s plenty of time and plenty for everyone.’ Over a period of 4 weeks we must have worked with over 300 boys bringing just a little joy into their lives; a moment to leave the trauma of their existence behind and share the thrill to express and play freely – just that! And together we collaboratively created many beautiful large-scale drawings and paintings. I then took everything back to the studio at Le Château to cut up and reassemble. Marrying my own practice of deconstruction and reconstruction with the children’s own playful experiments with paint and pastel, much of the work was then stitched together into large ‘patchwork panels’ by resident dressmakers.
For the happy memory, half of the final product – a giant, pieced-together painting – now hangs on the walls of Maison de la Gare. The rest, rolled up and packed in my backpack, came with me on my journey through Senegal. Arriving in the studio at Village des Arts in Dakar, the process is continued; more cutting up, tearing, stitching, painting over, rubbing and scratching into, gluing onto board, layering, reassembling. The process takes over ….. with the work of the talibé barely visible, but nonetheless a very necessary start to the whole process of intuitive call and response. We made it together, in other words!’
* Maison de la Gare – “a non-governmental organisation dedicated to helping the talibé street children to become productive cititzens in Senegalese society. The organisation is a Senegalese initiative, driven by a commitment to improve the lives of these children.”
For further reading and images, go to Dakar Artist Residency in Projects and Talibé Paintings (Senegal) in the Gallery
