Presented as part of the OFF Programme of the 2026 Dakar Biennale and Partcours, Palimpsest of African Cities is a group exhibition bringing together artists, architects, photographers, filmmakers, and researchers to explore the forces, narratives, and everyday dynamics that shape contemporary African cities.

Curators
Olufemi Hinson Yovo and Ken Aïcha Sy

Artists
Abraham Oghobase, Louis Oke Agbo, Monira Al Qadiri, Sammy Baloji, Younès Ben Slimane, Serigne Mbaye Camara, Danielle Dean, Chantal Edie and Zacharie Ngnogue, Bacary Dieme, Modou Dieng Yacine, Mbaye Diop, Du Zhenjun, Rayan Elnayal, Massow Ka, Gaël Maski Kusakusa, Keren Lasme, Ina Makosi, Ashenafe Mestika, Sabanoh, Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Wouété

The exhibition includes a significant programme of new commissions and artistic production. New works are being developed in Dakar through artists’ residencies by Ashenafe Mestika (Ethiopia), Modou Dieng Yacine (Senegal), and Keren Lasme (Côte d’Ivoire). It also features several newly commissioned works, including a major work by Bacary Dieme, a leading figure of the Dakar School and the senior artist in the exhibition. Together, these commissions and residencies affirm the exhibition’s commitment to supporting artistic production while fostering dialogue between historical legacies and contemporary practices.

Conceived in partnership with KADIST, the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), and the Institut français du Sénégal, the exhibition approaches the city as a space in constant rewriting, where memories, everyday uses, architectures, mobilities, and imaginaries overlap and interact. In dialogue with the Biennale’s theme, “(Anti)Fragility,” it explores the forms of resilience, adaptation, and solidarity that emerge within urban environments.

Rather than presenting the African city as a fixed or unified entity, the exhibition examines its fluid and evolving forms, revealing the ongoing negotiation between institutional models of urban planning and the informal infrastructures shaped by residents’ everyday needs, practices, and aspirations.

The exhibition examines African urban environments through their fluid and evolving forms of adaptation and collective resilience, revealing the constant negotiation between institutional visions of the planned city and the informal urban realities shaped by residents’ everyday practices, needs, and aspirations.

Presented across Galerie Le Manège, Centre Yennenga, Yennenga, Institut Français du Sénégal, and
Librairie Aux 4 Vents, the exhibition invites audiences to experience the city as much as the artworks themselves. Photography, painting, film, installation, archival materials, and research-based practices unfold across multiple sites, encouraging visitors to reconsider contemporary urban realities while fostering new forms of spatial awareness and engagement.

Bringing together perspectives from different regions of Africa and its diasporas, Palimpsest of African Cities reflects on the ways people shape, inhabit, and continually reinvent their environments. It positions the city as a space of memory, negotiation, and projection—one that remains open to multiple possible futures.