Delays and Allegations Cool Off Africa’s Hottest Art Event

Artists were putting the final touches to their works. Visitors had bought tickets long in advance. Everyone was counting on a big splash for the 15th edition of the event rapidly becoming Africa’s most prominent cultural gathering — the biennale in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, which had been set to start on May 16.

So when the West African country’s new government postponed Dak’Art at the last minute, saying it wanted to wait to hold it in optimum conditions, the African art world initially responded with dismay. The delay until November would mean less traffic through exhibitions and fewer sales, hurting a crop of up-and-coming African artists, many observers felt.

Just when the artists had regrouped, vowing to plow ahead in May with the smorgasbord of side events and exhibitions known as OFF despite the absence of the official biennale, a Ghanaian artist made accusations of sexual assault against the creator of the city’s biggest show, the American painter Kehinde Wiley. Wiley had been out on the town, opening an exhibition of his portraits of African heads of state at Dakar’s Museum of Black Civilizations, and showcasing the work of his protégées at his Black Rock art residency. Suddenly, after issuing a denial — he called the claims “not true and an affront to all victims of sexual abuse” — he was gone from the scene.

The allegations hampered — but did not kill — West African artists’ valiant attempts to keep up momentum around OFF and assure those planning to fly in that, even without the official biennale, there would be plenty to justify a trip to the city, surrounded by the turquoise Atlantic, at Africa’s westernmost tip.

The faithful still came.

Artists hung paintings from trees, converted the walls of stores and restaurants into galleries, and filled some of Dakar’s run-down architectural gems with installations — piles of rubble, pieces of pirogue boats, a tennis court. Visitors zoomed around town in yolk-yellow ramshackle taxis, each one a work of art in itself, and dressed up in their best bazin and pagne tissé — colorful African fabrics — to attend a full program of exhibition launch parties. It helped that the Partcours, a collection of artistic events in galleries around town, kept its programming for mid-May to mid-June, as planned.