Cooldiabang

Biography

Born in Abéné, Casamance, Senegal, in 1972. To his credit, numerous exhibitions, performances, workshops, residencies and concerts… in Senegal, the Gambia, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, England….

- Member of the artists' collective Les Agités du Bocal in Rennes.

- Founding member of the artists' collective Ici & Là-bas Arts.

- Artistic director of the Abéné Festival in Abéné, Casamance.

Cool Diabang's artistic approach is that of an authentic artist — a true man — a free thinker and a free maker. He explores the world, the worlds (mystical, spiritual, imagined, real) and the people around him, offering us his perceptions to see, to hear or to live through various media (painting, sculpture, music or performance). But whatever the medium, there is always the gesture — the rhythm. The movement of his painterly performance is perceptible even in the stillness of the finished canvas.

His canvases are emotional explosions. Cool Diabang works the material — wrestles with it — incarnates himself in it. His canvases are at times scarified, scratched, wounded, knotted. They are alive and vibrant. One can sense secret links within them, invent stories from them. They become echoes of our inner monsters or our dreams. They are like our moods — changeable. They unfold endlessly. And then at nightfall, between dog and wolf, the Diabang Blue lights up and one feels something of the order of magic at work — an alchemy — a gift.

TEXT: Maya White