‘This scene is alive’: Abidjan art week showcases city as growing cultural hub | Côte d’Ivoire

On a recent weekday evening, the doors of more than a dozen galleries and museums in Abidjan remained open until midnight, several hours later than usual, as art enthusiasts toured the town on a bus tour. It was Galleries Night, designed for people to stop by after work and enjoy Abidjan art week to the fullest.

The after-hours special was first tested in January 2024 on the sidelines of the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament hosted and won by Ivory Coast. This tradition continued this year in the third edition of the art week, which lasted from last Tuesday to Sunday.

Since its opening, Abidjan art week has diversified its locations to include different parts of the city, such as the La Rotonde des Arts center for contemporary arts in the storied administrative district Plateau and the Adama Toungara Museum of Contemporary Cultures (MuCAT) in the working-class neighborhood of Abobo.

“It is about creating opportunities to encounter art beyond specific situations and encouraging the idea of ​​visiting not only to buy but also to dive into the world of the artist,” said Marie-Hélène Banimbadio Tusiama, spokesperson for the art week.

Following two civil wars that strangled Ivory Coast in the 2000s and 2010s, the economic capital of Francophone West Africa lays claim to being at the center of the contemporary West African art scene alongside Dakar, the region’s default reference point for the visual arts.

The number of local art collectors is increasing in Abidjan, which hosts many immigrants from inside and outside Africa. MuCAT has been hosting the Africa Photo Fair since 2022 and organizing the Marché des Arts du Spectacle d’Abidjan, Abidjan’s answer to the Dakar Biennale 14th edition at the end of this month.

A nationwide graffiti festival was launched two years ago; This was a symbolic U-turn in a country where graffiti art had previously been associated with vandalism and artists risked criminal prosecution. Today, the exterior walls of the La Pyramide building and several luxury hotels in the Plateau area are covered with colorful murals.

Organizers of the art week say they hope the local arts scene will grow sustainably and aim to take it to new heights “regardless of external sanctions”. This edition saw artists from Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali among those exhibiting their work across the city, and the number of participating galleries more than doubled.

Yacouba Konaté, the event’s founder and also the director of La Rotonde des Arts, says the aim is to attract as much public participation as possible, pointing to the perception that enjoying art is a strictly elite activity.

“We want this event to become increasingly visible and reach a wide audience,” he said. “One of the things we’re trying to do is really communicate, tell people that Abidjan is a city of culture, that there’s a visual arts scene in Ivory Coast, and that scene is vibrant.”

This year, the week opened with a tribute to Simone Guirandou-N’Diaye, one of Ivory Coast’s earliest art historians and a pioneer of gallery spaces that gave the scene its first institutional roots. He and his daughter Gazelle run Galerie LouiSimone Guirandou, one of this year’s participating venues.

The Murmures d’Archives exhibition at MuCAT presented a different record of quieter, more archival art. We closed the week with an artist workshop and DJ set.

The luxurious Cocody solo exhibition, opened by New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, one of the city’s most important venues, drew the Ivorian diaspora into conversation with the local scene. The artist said the work was inspired by seeing art as universal.

“My vision is not tied to any country or continent; it transcends borders and everything that can be found on the map,” said Watts, who moved to New York in 1988 on the recommendation of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat. “While I use recognizable elements to better understand myself, this is a project that goes far beyond that. It is the universe I paint.”