Fredj Moussa

Tell me about your dream mosque

"[...] This is a mosque that descended from the sky on the night of 27 to 29 June in 1973. This mosque has descended.”

- Mouhamed Naby Gueye

Selebe Yoon is pleased to present “Tell me about your dream mosque”, an exhibition by Fredj Moussa  as a result of his research residency ’. Following a six-week residency in Senegal, the exhibition comprises paintings, drawings, sculptures and a video installation.

Fredj Moussa's research began with a story, the one of Mohamed Gorgui Seyni Gueye, known as Sangabi, and the dream in which the Mosque of Divinity, now located on Ouakam Bay, was revealed to him in March 1973. The latter is said to have been ordered to follow a luminous model parachuted from the sky, leading him to the west of Dakar, where the mosque is said to have landed, adorned with the Arabic inscription: ‘الله أكبر’ [God is great].

A dreamlike architecture, the Mosque of Divinity becomes a space of possibilities - a dreamed space, a collective fable where Moussa unveils an encounter between the sacred and the speculative. Through a body of work, he explores the way in which a place transcends its material existence to become a site where beliefs, individual memories and shared histories converge.

The central installation presents a light, levitating architecture onto which are projected filmed testimonies about this founding myth. Like large cinema posters, the canvases hung in the space constitute a film advertisement. They refer both to common tales from the Ouakam district and to other fables, notably those of the Ouakam storyteller Birargo Diop. Here, the artist adopts the point of view of the caiman, whose brains are extracted and used as a remedy. Finally, the “wearable sculptures” - as the artist calls them - are inspired by traditional dress, particularly those worn during prayers at the mosque, and take on the function of talismans and amulets, with a healing and protective power. 

Fredj Moussa combines real and fictional stories, beliefs and practices linked to this space, not only as a spiritual place but also as a territory belonging to the collective imagination. Using this singular architecture with its simplified geometric form as a starting point, the artist explores the spaces where the here and the elsewhere can meet. The film’s posters stimulate the public's imagination and instill a thought: what would be the mosque of your dreams?  

© Text copyright: Selebe Yoon