Transcultural Exchange in Art, Fashion and Sports

An exhibition organised by the German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations

Following an invitation by the institute, seventeen artists from Africa and Europe came to Dakar in November 2008 to engage in a ten day multimedia and interdisciplinary workshop dealing with fashion, identity, history and movement.

The artists brought influences from Berlin, Kinshasa, Dakar, London, Stuttgart, Douala, Hamburg and Johannesburg with them to the Senegalese capital and jointly developed projects in a wide variety of artistic genres. The artworks created during the Dakar workshop – such as photographs, films and video, sound and room installations – constitute this exhibition and will be on display in Africa for two years.

After the premiere in Dakar in September 2009, the exhibition was staged in Nigeria and will now travel to West, East and South Africa.

The prêt-à-partager (“ready to share”) exhibition is a transnational artistic dialogue on fashion, sport, Africa and its Diaspora. These collected works embrace the varied meanings and possibilities of clothing and fashion as determined by different societies and individuals and explore them in myriad ways that go beyond their function as consumer goods.

The Dakar metropolitan area serves as the stage of a world in constant flux, where concepts of identity are fluid. The artists have utilised the fabric of their own history and the familiarisation with new cultural practices to develop striking works, hybrid creations which are socially explosive.

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