Les Traversées - Crossings

Laye Thioune

 
 

The Senegalese artist - Laye Thioune whose first solo show in the USA is entitled  ‘Les Traversées’ or ‘ The Crossings’, was born and raised in Dakar, Senegal.   

At times it is the geographic location of Dakar - on its peninsula at the extreme western tip of the African continent - that is said to provide the scaffolding for the all encompassing African cultural metropolis that Dakar has been and continues to be. It is this coldrum of art, culture and history that continues to birth new talents and Laye is a member of this next generation of multi talented Senegalese creatives. 

 
 
 
 

Laye’s artistic sensitivity manifested at a very young age, and as with all people who seek a way without necessarily knowing where they are heading, he tried his hand at several professions and lived life with all the ups and downs but also with the joys it brings, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a very open approach to life. He first studied at the National School of Arts in Dakar, majoring in music, and upon his graduation, he set up a group that performed on several stages in Senegal. At the same time he continued to search for himself and later re-enrolled in the same National School of Art, but this time for studies in visual arts from which he graduated first in his class. Since then, he has enjoyed his life as a visual artist, alternating between painting and sculpture in an intensely colorful universe.

 
 
 

Laye Thioune practices both painting and sculpture, depending on his inspiration. By a surprising contrast, he often only paints faceless characters and only sculpts faces without bodies, one being able to compensate for the other in an endless back and forth. His works are generally very colorful and, yet that lightness channels a form of stoicism combined with a diffuse melancholy, which might have its roots deep in the artist's lived experience. 

 
 

This succession of contrasts and the questions it raises in us exert a form of inexplicable fascination. His characters, observed from the front or the back - one never knows - give the

impression of tiptoeing. Yet, it is not tranquility that they exude, but rather a form of instability, so characteristic of the artist's search and our search for meaning in our lives. Likewise, his masks, which we must remember their primary function is to hide and to disguise reality, are rarely smiling or happy and without ever expressing sadness!  It is indeed a clever balance between more and less, too much and not enough!

 

Laye has exhibited several times in Senegal, notably at ‘Regards sur Cours’ in Gorée in 2023, and he was also selected for the Blue Biennale in Romania in 2023.  

We invite you to please enter Laye’s universe and be carried away by the artist’s extraordinary and brilliant sensitivity in this collection of artworks. Through it, he is crossing both the divide of the Atlantic Ocean from that city on the other side which seems to beckon to the American continent - in a form of reconnection, rediscovery and a renewed welcome while also passing back and forth  in a renewed consciousness between his past, present and future. 

 
 
 
 

Copy by: Sylvain Sankalé, Art critic, Dakar