Market Imaginary Screening and Discussion

Market Imaginary explores the commercial/social, historical/spatial, and visual/creative networks around Colobane Market in Dakar, Senegal, and the many ways the market is embedded in its neighborhood and the broader imagination of Dakar’s residents. The objects populating market stalls—colorful plastics, tattered journals, used clothing and shoes as well as watches, radios and cell phones—oblige the eye and the imagination to travel. As much as the market represents the convergence of objects, people, and possibilities, it is also the point from which these ensembles diverge and take new directions.

The film features interviews with shop owners, artists, historians, and economists including Viyé Diba, Abdoulaye Ndoye, Ndary Lo, Cheikh Ndiaye, Fally Sene Sow, 2Pac Colobane, Docta, Vieux Cissé, Aminata Diop, El Hadji Ousmane Mbenga, Ndeye Fatou Gueye, and Ousmane Sene. The premiere of Market Imaginary was sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Section of the American Embassy, Dakar, in conjunction with the Dak’Art Biennale in June 2012.

Joanna Grabski (writer/director/producer) is associate professor and chair of art history at Denison University. Her research and publications have focused on visual and urban projects in Dakar, Senegal, and Brazzaville, Congo. Her essays have appeared in several edited collections and academic journals including Art Journal, African Arts, Fashion Theory, Nka, Présence Francophone, and Social Dynamics. She was guest editor of a special issue of Africa Today dedicated to “Visual Experience in Urban Africa” (2007) and coeditor of the book, African Art, Interviews, Narratives: Bodies of Knowledge at Work (Indiana University Press, 2013). Her current project is a book about artists and urban visuality in Dakar titled Art World City. (52 mins.)

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Center for African Studies and the Department of African American and African Studies.