“LA MATERIA DEI SOGNI - Radici dell’arte africana contemporanea”

"The Stuff of Dreams. Roots of Contemporary African Art" brings together more than one hundred and twenty works by twenty-three artists from ten countries of sub-Saharan Africa, selected by curator Enrico Mascelloni. Created for the most part between the 1970s and 1990s, they are works by the first great innovators of African art after the era of tribal sculpture. The thread that unites them is the dream: local rites, myths and symbols intertwine with the Western imagination. The works range from the figurative coffins of Ghana to the voodoo deities of Benin, as well as the terracottas of the great Senegalese women sculptors and the festive painting of Georges Lilanga. The exhibition is dedicated to Sarenco, the curator's travelling companion in the discovery of these artists.

Piazzetta Botter Mario, 1, 31100 Treviso TV

Available itineraries

Stuff of Dreams - Roots of Contemporary African Art

Coffins shaped like mobile phones, sculptures bristling with porcupine quills, brightly coloured voodoo deities, clay mothers covered in newborns. This itinerary crosses ten countries of sub-Saharan Africa through the works of the great masters of contemporary African art, artists who have been shown at the Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou and the world's major museums. You descend into the Sacred Grove of Dreams and encounter the elegant portraits of mid-twentieth-century Dakar. You listen to the story of a sculptress found in the forest while she was gathering palm wine, and you retrace the Mau Mau struggle, carved on tree trunks. The journey ends among the dancing creatures of Georges Lilanga. Every artist has a story to tell, and almost always it begins with a dream.

“LA MATERIA DEI SOGNI - Radici dell’arte africana contemporanea”