Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how artists are carefully mapping alternative routes that, while rejecting borders, compress spatial and temporal notions, without diluting them into a mumbo jumbo. Resisting globalization, they are having concepts dialogue, maintaining the imaginary forces to which they refer.

Paper long abstract:

Didier Awadi, Senegalese rapper, proposes, through his work, collaborations of a particular kind in order to debunk the postcolonial imbalanced realities persisting into the 21st century. This is illustrated through his album Présidents d'Afrique where he travels through Africa and the Americas to speak about the importance of historical figures like Lumumba, Nkrumah, Mandela, Nasser, Malcolm X, Obama, carefully linking traditional music to rap compositions, combining temporal, spatial and artistic practices. This positioning is used by many visual artists and is a mode of resistance to globalization, giving voice to neglected concepts. In this paper, I will be showing how Safaa Erruas, Moroccan artist, intertwines ancient customs, such as that of tattoos, practiced by rural women to deflect evil forces, with contemporary concerns brought about by wars, discrimination, rejection. Kader Attia, Franco-Algerian, in Réfléchir la mémoire (2016) has us think about similar issues and shows how a repressed traumatic event can take on uncontrollable dimensions, impacting an entire population. Barthelemy Toguo, Cameroon, in his recent works, attracts our attention to the monumental/monstrous aspect of globalization (circulation of commodities and its invisible and unassailable essence), which impact the environment, to show us how it affects the individual's intimate relation to the world. Artists, while deconstructing national and continental barriers, rural and urban divisions, are astutely creating alliances to corrode the dominant forces at play, through artistic intertwinements, mapping alternative routes that above all compress spatial and temporal notions, in order to not dilute their creative potential into the "no-man's land" of globalization.