Selebe Yoon is pleased to announce Fredj Moussa’s research residency in Dakar in April-May 2025 for a duration of 6 weeks. This residency is part of Nessij’s Cross-research Residency Program in 2025 for visual artists between Senegal and Tunisia, also in collaboration with La Boîte, Centre d’art et d’architecture, Tunis.

Residency

“The aim of my research residency is to explore the Mosque of the Divinity, located on Ouakam Bay in Dakar. This architecture, revealed by a dream to Mohamed Gorgui Seyni Gueye, known as Sangabi, in March 1973, stands out as a place of spirituality, but also of collective imagination.

My research into this peculiar architecture is part of a reflection on spaces where the elsewhere and the here, as well as the intimate and the collective can intersect.

The mosque, with its model-like appearance, sports a simple form: a cube topped by two minarets and a suspended concrete dome. The whole, covered in white tiles like the surrounding floor, accentuates its unreal character, evoking the appearance of a 3D simulation. Beyond its architecture, I'm particularly interested in the mosque's singular history, including its revelation to Sangabi during a dream. According to the stories, a voice instructed him to follow a luminous model dropped from the sky, leading him to Ouakam, where the mosque landed with writing in Arabic الله أكبر " God is great ".

Arabic cursive script in my drawings and cinema occupy a central place in my research. During the residency, I plan to design a series of poster-sized drawings while also initiating the development of a film inspired by testimonies gathered from locals about the mosque.

The residency at Selebe Yoon gallery will constitute a key moment to develop a project where dreams become narrative and architectural engines. Through an approach combining filmic documentation and drawing, the research process on the Mosque of the Divinity will offer an opportunity to examine how a place transcends its physical status to become a meeting space for beliefs, individual and shared stories.”

- Fredj Moussa

Biography

Fredj Moussa (b. 1992) lives and works in Tunisia. He is a former resident at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 2019, at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing from 2021 to 2023, and at Villa Medici in Rome in 2024. Fredj Moussa's work consists of films, sculptures used as costumes and sets, and drawings as cinema posters.

He has exhibited his work at Nuit Blanche in Paris (FR), Loop Fair Barcelona (ES), Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia (USA), Izmir Mediterranean Biennial (TUR), Cabane B in Bern (CH), Les Brasseurs in Liège (BE) and Gortyn in Crete (GR) among others. Fredj Moussa's films have been selected for international festivals. He was a finalist for the Studio Collector prize at the Photo Days Festival at the MEP in Paris in 2022. Fredj Moussa receives the CIFRA prize at Loop Fair Barcelona in 2023.

In partnership with NESSIJ and La Boîte, Centre d’art et d’architecture, Tunis.