Exhibition - “Salesman of Revolt” at Auto Italia

Auto Italia presents Salesman of Revolt, the first solo exhibition in the UK by Senegalese-Mauritanian artist and film director Hamedine Kane, opening on September 27 and on view until December 1, 2024. The exhibition brings the site-specific installation Trois Américains à Paris (2024) together with work from Kane’s series Salesman of Revolt (2018). This presentation foregrounds Kane’s ongoing research into often overlooked experiences of exile and forced migration, challenging dominant post colonial understandings of borders and racialised identity.

Salesman of Revolt, the series from which the exhibition takes its name, consists of a series of woodcut prints, created in collaboration with India-based artist Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, and a performance, the documentation of which was used to develop a nine-minute moving image work. The exhibition includes three prints from the series, all based on the front covers of influential publications and documents. Among those shown is the Code Noir, a decree passed by King Louis XIV of France in 1685 that defined the laws and conditions of slavery across the French colonial empire. Juxtaposed with this document are the covers of more recent texts: Cameroonian-French writer Calixthe Beyala’s novel C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée (The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me, 1987) and American author and activist Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates’ autobiographical book Une colère noire: Lettre à mon fils (2016), originally published as Between The World And Me in 2015. With subjects spanning different contexts and eras, this selection from the wider series spotlights defining historical moments in the development of imperialist ideologies that permeate and influence the conditions of African and African diasporic communities to this day.

Hamedine Kane, Salesman of Revolt, 2024. Installation view at Auto Italia, London, UK. Courtesy the artist. Photographer: Daniel Browne.