‘This scene is alive’: Abidjan art week showcases city as growing cultural hub

On a recent weekday evening, the doors of more than a dozen galleries and museums across Abidjan stayed open till midnight, several hours later than usual, as art enthusiasts went around town on a bus tour. It was the Night of the Galleries, designed for people to drop in after work and enjoy Abidjan art week to the fullest.The after-hours special showcase was first tested in January 2024 on the sidelines of the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament hosted and won by Côte d’Ivoire. The tradition continued this year during the art week’s third edition, which ran from last Tuesday to Sunday.Visitors gather at La Rotonde des Arts during the Night of the Galleries, part of Abidjan art week. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The GuardianSince its launch, Abidjan art week has diversified its locations to include different parts of the city, such as La Rotonde des Arts centre for contemporary arts in the high-rise administrative district of Plateau and the Adama Toungara Museum of Contemporary Cultures (MuCAT) in the working-class neighbourhood of Abobo.“It is about creating opportunities to encounter art beyond specific occasions, and fostering the idea of visiting not only to buy but to immerse oneself in the artist’s world,” said Marie-Hélène Banimbadio Tusiama, a spokesperson for the art week.After two civil wars throttled Côte d’Ivoire in the 2000s and 2010s, francophone west Africa’s economic capital has been staking a claim to be at the centre of the contemporary west African art scene alongside Dakar, the region’s default reference point for visual arts.Fragments of Knowledge by the artist Prosper Aluu at Galerie LouiSimone Guirandou. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The GuardianIn Abidjan, home to many immigrants from within and beyond Africa, a contingent of local art collectors is on the rise. Since 2022, MuCAT has hosted the Africa Foto Fair, and the Marché des Arts du Spectacle d’Abidjan – Abidjan’s answer to the Dakar Biennale – holds its 14th edition later this month.A nationwide graffiti festival was instituted two years ago, a symbolic U-turn in a country where graffiti art was previously associated with vandalism and artists ran the risk of being criminally prosecuted. Today, colourful murals line the outside walls of La Pyramide building and several posh hotels in the Plateau district.Organisers of the art week say they hope to see sustained growth of the local art scene and have a goal to scale it to new heights “independently of external approval”. In this edition, artists from Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali were among those showing work across the city, and the number of participating galleries more than doubled.The event’s founder, Yacouba Konaté, who is also the director at La Rotonde des Arts, says it is intentional about inclusion of as many members of the public as possible, a nod to the perception that enjoying art is a strictly elite activity.Yacouba Konaté, the founder and director of La Rotonde des Arts, speaks with a group of visitors during the Night of the Galleries. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The Guardian“We want this event to become increasingly visible and accessible to a broad public,” he said. “One of the things we’re trying to do is really communicate, to tell people that Abidjan is a cultural city and that there is a visual arts scene in Côte d’Ivoire and this scene is alive.”This year, the week opened with a tribute to Simone Guirandou-N’Diaye, one of the earliest art historians in Côte d’Ivoire and a pioneer of the gallery spaces that gave the scene its first institutional roots. She and her daughter Gazelle now run Galerie LouiSimone Guirandou, one of this year’s participating venues.A visitor takes in an exhibition by the New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury. Photograph: Aïcha Fall/The GuardianAt MuCAT, the exhibition Murmures d’Archives offered a different register of quieter, more archival art. It was there that the week closed with an artists workshop and a DJ set.In upmarket Cocody, a solo exhibition mounted by the New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, one of the city’s most prominent spaces, drew the Ivorian diaspora into conversation with the local scene. The artist said the work was inspired by seeing art as universal.“My vision is not tied to any particular country or continent; it transcends borders and everything that can be found on a map,” said Watts, who moved to New York in 1988 on the advice of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Whilst I use recognisable elements to make myself better understood, this is a project that goes far beyond that. It is the cosmos that I paint.”