Les Tambours de la Mer

"Deaf is the voice of the sea, transparent is its calling” 

- Daouda Gueye, Writer

Selebe Yoon is pleased to present “Les Tambours de La Mer” (The Drums of the Sea) a sculptural exhibition of recent works by El Hadji Sy (b. 1954) as an ode to Doudou N'diaye Rose - an internationally renowned Senegalese percussionist. Dozens of vertical sculptures composed of elements of the marine realm are placed in the exhibition space like a silent orchestra.

El Hadji Sy, has always aimed, since the creation of the Laboratoire Agit’ Art in 1974, at the articulation of the arts - theater, dance, music, visual art, literature and design - and the translation of these different mediums into a "visual syntax". As scenic objects, his works celebrate the great master of drums, who was able to lead a hundred drummers on several rhythms at the same time. Emblem of the sabar drum, Doudou N’diaye Rose innovated percussion by alternating new rhythmic creations with traditional sounds. Faced with his sculptures, one can imagine the frenzy of the hands and feet of the percussionists but also those of El Hadji Sy, known for painting while dancing, stomping and hitting the canvas in the 1970s, his feet covered with paint to mark his protest against the aesthetic dogmas of negritude. 

While some of the sculptures are covered with shells, pebbles, fishing lines, portholes, sea lanterns, sails - the monolithic-looking upper part is painted, wrapped in paper mache, or with several layers of white fabric. This gesture of mummification recalls his SOS Culture performance where he himself was wrapped by the late Issa Samb at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1995. 

These sculptures simultaneously evoke other functional and highly symbolic objects, as the artist notes: 

"The Mortar became a drum, 

the Pestle has become a stick,

Megalithic sounding, 

The whole becomes a sculpture." (Interview with the artist, April 2023) 

By evoking the first music of the world, the sea, El Hadji Sy summons the underbelly of the marine world that encircles the peninsula and this maternal womb that today suffers from global warming. This is not the first time that the artist alludes to the Atlantic: in 2015, at the Biennial of Sao Paulo, he proposed an installation entitled "Archéologie Marine" in tribute to those who perished at sea during the slave trade.  

Within the exhibition, visitors also roam through "The Cabinets of Memory" - works halfway between design and art that reveal the artist-designer for the first time. The cabinet, a functional space that also teases one’s imagination, is a place of intimacy, of memory, with a possible opening onto the world.

The exhibition is accompanied by an immersive sound piece conceived specifically for this exhibition by Gadea (also known as Carlota Marques). Gadea is a spanish sound artist, composer, and dj and live performer born in 1993. Her sonic piece weaves intricate tapestry of sounds from man-made to the natural world.

Text copyright: Selebe Yoon