Fatim Soumaré: Djilor

Djilor 

Fatim Soumaré

November 6th, 2026– March 27th, 2027

Opening November 18, 2026 6pm-9pm

Alongside the 16th Dakar Biennale, Selebe Yoon is pleased to present "Djilor", Fatim Soumaré's first solo exhibition at the gallery, where the artist will unveil a series of seven new monumental textile works.

A village established on the banks of the Siin Delta in southern Senegal, where Fatim Soumaré lives and works, in Serer "Djilor" also means "to withdraw" or "to choose another place for oneself". According to oral tradition, the village’s founder first glimpsed the land in a dream. To help him find this place, a woman named Ndé Thioro gave him a spool of cotton she had spun by hand and by unwinding the thread, his path revealed itself. At Djilor’s origin, then lies a thread, always spun by women’s hands, connecting the dream to the soil and its many topographies. 

In between the building's columns rise seven monumental works composed of cotton and materials gathered along a journey extending from Cape Verde to the Maghreb, and as far as Brazil. Extended horizontally, the threads form seemingly endless vines, tracing an interwoven map that appears at once abstract and rooted in specific places. Objects bearing the gestures, techniques and knowledge of the places travelled punctuate the works: terracotta beads, seashells and oyster shells, metal spinning wheels and anchors used by fishermen in Ndangane, Senegal; bronze spouts from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; old manillas recovered at the port of Dakar—objects whose changing uses over time speak, in many ways, to the paradoxes of human history: first ornaments in the Kingdom of Dahomey, then currency in the transatlantic slave trade, then restraints around the wrists and ankles of enslaved people, and later tools for handling cargo; sand from Gabès, Tunisia; fish scales from the waters of Itaparica, Brazil; and wool offcuts from Amazigh carpets, shaped by the last artisan shearsmen of Khénifra, Morocco.

An ancestral practice that carries memory, weaving unfolds in Fatim Soumaré's work as a shared language, a means of storytelling, and a metaphor for physical and social bonds. The artist probes the history of the cotton plant and its precolonial circulation across the African continent, particularly along trans-Saharan routes, as well as the vernacular practices and technocultural knowledge that developed around its transformation. She studies variations of the traditional loom, the social and symbolic functions attached to it, as well as the upheavals caused by the industrial exploitation of cotton and the consequences of globalized industrialization.

Evoking a succession of doors, the works in the exhibition "Djilor" map out an infinity of possible trajectories for visitors. As an  architectural element, a door may mark the monumental entrance to a city, like the majestic Ishtar Gate; remain as a vestige of a vanished enclosure; signal passage into a sacred space; or embody intimacy, welcome and hospitality in the home. Yet Fatim Soumaré’s doors stand apart from any enclosure. Supple and permeable, sensitive to air movement and passing bodies, they neither close off nor defend a territory: they invite us to imagine a place where different geographies—whether tangible or imagined—could meet. From one work to the next, each threshold seems to herald a new one, maintaining the visitor in a perpetual zone of passage, in a continuous peregrination. From their monochrome appearances to their tangible fibers, Fatim Soumaré's works care for, protect, and repair past heritages and those that are only just being woven.

Like palimpsests, these works hold multiple places at once and retain traces of the journeys that shaped them: those of the objects composing them, the hands that helped create them, and the stories woven into them. Here, the thread crosses territories as much as it connects people. For the artist, it becomes a means to spark encounters, organize the exchange of knowledge, and ensure the survival of traditional craftsmanship. Each work is thus a vessel for shared histories, knowledge and experience.

© Text copyright: Jennifer Houdrouge