Paper short abstract:

Artistic production in Dakar is distinctively entangled with infrastructural critique. This paper examines artistic practice in the context of intersecting verbal and visual genres of denunciation.

Paper long abstract:

Artistic production in Dakar is distinctively entangled with infrastructural critique. From the popular ecology movement 'Set Setal', which blended cleaning and purging of the urban environment with projects of aesthetic embellishment to contemporary photographers who document the city exhaustively for social media audiences, the city's material excesses and infrastructural failures have consistently inspired creative and aesthetic engagement. Drawing upon ethnographic work with Senegalese artists and a close reading of Laboratoire Agit'Art's 2017 installation 'Dakar: Ville Anarchitecturale', this paper examines this social practice in the context of verbal and visual genres of denunciation.