The 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters will be held from the 8th of December, 2022, until the 8th of February, 2023. This was announced by Mr. Andogoly Guindo, Minister of Crafts, who wants to “maintain this major cultural event, despite the difficult context, marked by multiple crises in Mali and all over the world”. It will take place at the National Museum of Mali, the African House of Photography, the Bamako Railway Station, the Bamako District Museum, the Modibo Keita Memorial, the French Institute of Mali, the Medina Gallery and the Ba Aminata Diallo Girls High School.
Collaboratively conceived by the curatorial team – Akinbode Akinbiyi (artist and independent curator), Meriem Berrada (Artistic Director, MACAAL, Marrakech), Tandazani Dhlakama (Assistant Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town), and Liz Ikiriko (artist and Curator of Collections and Contemporary Engagement at Art Gallery of York University, Toronto) together with Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung – this edition of the Biennale will once again facilitate a moment of encounter for artists from the African world.
Titled “Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono—On Multiplicity, Difference, Becoming and Heritage”, this edition is an invitation to reflect collectively on these multiplicities of being and differences, to go beyond the notion to be unique and to embrace composite, layered and fragmented identities, as well as multiple, complex and non-linear understandings of space and time. The Bamako Encounters will pay a powerful tribute to the spaces in between, to that which defies definition, to phases of transition, to being this and that or neither and both, to becoming, and to difference and divergence in all their shades. Accordingly, Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s statement (Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Éditions Présence Africaine, 1972) presiding over the manifestation, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, translates to, “the persons of the person are multiple in the person.”
The exhibition is conceived in five chapters referencing Aimé Césaire’s seminal poem “Unmaking and Remaking the Sun” and relating to the theme of this 13th edition and the artistic selection. About 75 artists from the African world will present their works.
