Christa Dee

This body of work consists of paintings on jute, each an abstract portrait of a particular project for the built environment but titled as a portrait of the architect(s) who designed them.

Spanning over two decades and following a loose chronological order from 1993 to the present, the exhibition presented over seventy works characterising the artist’s engagement with abstract, symbolic, and thematic themes, and more importantly, his heartbeat for Nigeria.

Acutely erudite in music and equally conversant in literature, politics, philosophy and history, he was an artist who could lead the viewer to enter his work from different points of view.

The title for Dak’Art 2016 ‘The City in the Blue Daylight’ was taken from a poem by Leopold Sedar Senghor, specifically the line, ‘Your voice tells us about the Republic that we shall erect the City in the Blue Daylight In the equality of sister nations. And we, we answer: Presents, Ô Guélowâr!’

Curated by Christine Tohme, the biennial featured over fifty international artists. The five parts of SB13 were an online depository of research material, four projects curated by four Interlocutors outside of the UAE, a year-long education programme in Sharjah, a year-long online publishing platform and a public programme in two parts.

The 2nd and final Johannesburg Biennale took place in 1997 under the artistic direction of Okwui Enwezor, who at the time had been appointed as the curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. The biennale differed in structure to its 1995 predecessor. It was composed of a series of exhibitions with 6 international curators.