Handwerker Gallery to Show Works of Senegalese Painter

An opening reception for The Art of Mor Faye will be held at the Handwerker Gallery on Thursday, October 5, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibit of watercolors, sketches, and oils will run through November 5. Bara Diokhané, curator of the Mor Faye estate, will give a talk on Faye’s work at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 19, in the gallery. All events are free and open to the public.

After studying fine arts at the National Arts School of Senegal, Faye received his master’s degree in art education from the Ecole des Arts du Senegal in 1966. He spent the next decade and a half teaching and painting. In 1980 he was confined to a mental hospital, where he continued to paint until his death four years later at age 37. In 1987 Faye’s estate entrusted Bara Diokhané to set up a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work.

"Some critics attempt to confine any contemporary and universal artistic proposition from Africa," Diokhané says. "They feel that, to be ‘authentic,’ African artists must reproduce only masks, wildlife, and village scenes; otherwise, they will create only weaker renditions of Western masters. Contemporary art from Africa appears to them irrelevant. In the art of Mor Faye we find an unspoken challenge to such critics."

In 1991 film director Spike Lee went to Senegal to explore possibilities of using the mosque of Touba for the movie Malcolm X. Lee discovered Faye’s work, admired it, and joined forces with Diokhané to bring it to international attention. They created the Atlantic Joint Collection to promote contemporary African cultural expressions and to recognize the continuities in African and American experiences.

"Mor Faye’s work," says Diokhané, "remains a strong statement of emotion, freedom, and openness—an endless searching, which is the purpose of all art."

Thanks to the efforts of Lee and Diokhané, Faye’s work has been exhibited in many galleries, museums, and institutions, among them the American and French Cultural Centers in Dakar; the Grand Palais in Paris; the Venice Art Biennale; the World Bank in Washington, D.C.; and Aaron Davis Hall and the Museum for African Art in New York.

For more information call the gallery at 274-3018 or contact Jelena Stojanovic, gallery director and assistant professor of art history, at 274-3548.

The Handwerker Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. (Thursday until 9:00 p.m.); Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 2:00–6:00 p.m.