Artist Spotlight - An Art Palette that Unites

An Interview with Senegalese-American artist Modou Dieng Yacine:

Our president, Paul G. Chandler, interviewed the remarkable Senegalese-American artist and curator Modou Dieng Yacine, who is from Senegal but now lives in Chicago. The interview is on the occasion of the opening of his newest exhibition at the Povos Gallery.

Paul G. Chandler and Modou Dieng Yacine at the "26-18" exhibition at the Povos Gallery in Chicago, IL, USA

“The religious perform a prayer. I perform a painting.”

Modou Dieng Yacine

Modou Dieng Yacine received a French Catholic education, while the majority of Senegal was Muslim. This created a foundational bond with France and its culture, but also bred a sense of alienation from his Senegalese and African identities. Yacine was born in 1970 in Saint-Louis, Senegal, a French colonial establishment built in the 17th century that played an important cultural and economic role in the whole of West Africa. He earned his BFA in Painting from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Senegal, and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California. Yacine was a professor and then director of the Department of Arts and Painting for a decade at the Pacific Northwestern College of Art in Portland, Oregon. He has exhibited widely, including at the San Francisco Art Institute (San Francisco, CA), Dakar Art Biennale (Dakar, Senegal), Art in Embassies (US Department of State), Museum of African Diaspora Art (New York, NY), as well in Paris, Dubai, Switzerland and Belgium. His works are also present in numerous collections, such as the Studio Museum in New York, at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C., and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri.

As a Senegalese-American artist, Yacine uniquely bridges between the cultures of Africa and the West, celebrating African identity and postcolonial futures, and exploring ways in which cultures and values can​​ unite us. He is a multidisciplinary artist and curator who employs painting, photography and collage as well as installation and performance art, to explore contemporary culture. Drawing on his Senegalese background, he also uses materials such as denim, burlap, cardboard and wood frames and engages with a wide range of ideas from African art history, to Bauhaus philosophies, to contemporary Pop culture. As a Senegalese, but above all as an African, Yacine opens the dialogue between Africa and the West, and the cultures and values that unite us. He now lives in Chicago, Illinois, a city he considers a new renaissance center, and is the co-founder and main curator of blackpuffin.

Instagram: @modou_dieng_yacine

Website: https://blackpuffin.co/about-modou-dieng

____________________________________

What first sparked your interest to create art and what formative influences have shaped your life as an artist?

Modou: I wanted to use my hands, but I couldn't be a mason or a carpenter because I grew up in a Muslim family in which, paradoxically, there was the belief that private Catholic school was the best way of educating your kids. So, I went to a private Catholic school for its disciplines, rigors, methods and applications.

But using a pen or typing on a computer keyboard wasn't enough for me. I needed to use my hands, it was a visceral feeling, so I turned to art.

You explore a variety of mediums in your work including painting, photography, and installation. What topics and themes would you say your art primarily seeks to address?

Modou: I love fashion and I love architecture. Architecture as habitat, living spaces, domestic spaces, and to some extent fashion does the same thing. It's the first shield, it covers us, camouflages us.

And I love working with our habitat, our domestic living style, making it pop and beautiful. I care a lot about beauty, because when I was a kid, art was a magical thing, a beautiful thing.

Swagman, 2023, Acrylic, oil sticks on archival print, 132 by 89 cm

I sense optimism in your art. Can you tell us about your inner journey in this regard?

Modou: An artist is an optimistic person. One has to be optimistic in order to see beauty in everything: in nature, in people, in machines. I think art imitates nature and artists imitate God. And God is very generous and optimistic.

“An artist is an optimistic person. I think art imitates nature and artists imitate God. And God is very generous and optimistic.”

Can you comment on your use of color and lines in your artistic work?

Modou: My palette comes from being born in a coastal colonial city, Saint-Louis, Senegal, where I experienced the colors of the sea, and the colors of France and the West in general. It gave me a sense of both belonging and not belonging. It made me realize the importance of colors in shaping identity and communities. So, I started looking for a palette that would unite me with my origins and affiliations, asking myself how to reconcile the colors of the French and Senegalese flags?

(L) Rambling roses. (Nate King Cole), 2025, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 72 x 54 in

(R) Memories of land lost, 2025, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 60 x 50 in

You created a fascinating body of work called Utopia Land exploring architectural imagery from the two French colonial towns of New Orleans, Louisiana, US and your hometown of Saint-Louis, Senegal. Can you share what inspired for that project, and speak to your reference of "asymmetrical parallelism," a term used by poet, philosopher and the first postcolonial President of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor? 

Modou: I am asking myself, who owns a colonial city? Does the colonizer or the colonized? Or is it owned by both?

Lycee Faidherbe, 2021. Mixed media on printed photograph. 52 x 36 in  

I used to go to New Orleans just because I missed my hometown of Saint-Louis, Senegal, and I would walk around looking for the same adornments on balconies, floors tiles, light fixtures, and door knobs. You know, trying to imagine the urban planning behind it and looking into the fashion of the time when they were built to try and understand these choices. In a sense, almost trying to forgive the colonizer because they had built these beautiful buildings and cities. And both cities have a deep connection with jazz music, with Creole music. Jazz is Creole after all.

President Senghor said it beautifully when he referenced rhythm in talking about African architecture. Asymmetrical parallelism is the rhythm in architecture and jazz. So that was my entry point in making “Utopia Land’ - creating rhythm on dimensional surfaces.

You have explored painting as a performative act, allowing viewers to enter in and experience your painting process. Can you tell us what inspired idea?

Modou: For me painting is a performative act. How do we reconcile the past, the present and the future in one moment of making a painting; in a moment which involves the physical, the material and the spiritual? What do you do with it? You perform. The religious perform a prayer. I perform a painting.

A short performance video of painting

I was intrigued by your work, Dakar 70s (2023) and Les médailles [The medalists] (2023). Can you explain the mélange of clothing represented in Dakar 70s and who is represented in Les médailles? And why are there scribbled lines through parts of these works?

Modou: The scribbles are ways of creating another space on the surface between layers of combined paint and photographs. They are also ways of expressing them as signatures, ownership over the image and the story the image is telling. “The medalists” is part of an ongoing series that is a homage to the Senegalese Tirailleurs (corps of indigenous infantry in the French Army) who fought alongside allies against Nazism.

Les médaillés [The medalists], 2023, Acrylic, oil sticks on archival print, 50.8 × 91.4 cm

Dakar 70s, 2023, Acrylic, oil sticks on archival print, 94 × 145 cm

“Dakar 70s,” is part of a body of artwork which was an appropriation of images from the mid to late 19th – 20th century depicting black figures. From Josephine Baker to young black British and Africans, it’s a way to reflect the beauty, the fashion and the contemporariness of the black body from the bustling metropolises of that time, that were Paris, London and Dakar, embracing the culture, the sound and the intellect that Africans and its diaspora have contributed to Western culture and civilization.

Your use of white ovals in place of people's faces is very powerful. Could you explain the symbolism behind that?

Modou: It's a blank space. It could be anyone’s face. Migrants are faceless and raceless; they are a work force, they are bodies in motion, in transit.

(L) Avec des freres [With Brothers], 2025, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 72 x 52 in

(R) Comme de Freres [Like Brothers], 2025, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 78 x 48 in

What do you feel artists can offer our world today?

Modou: The same as ten centuries ago, the same as always - rendering beauty and bringing more joy and optimism into the world, into our domestic lives, and recording our daily lives and its complexity for generations to come.

I strongly believe that making beautiful things can cause change because it gives people happiness. It gives people pleasure; it gives people ways of uplifting themselves and getting a better life and having a better journey.

Cosmic Feelings, 2020, acrylic paint, ink, oil stick, collage on canvas, 48 x 72 in

Can you share more about the organization you co-founded, blackpuffin? 

Modou: Blackpuffin is a curatorial platform that facilitates collaboration and conversation among creators and curators from the African diaspora and their counterparts in the global art world. America can be a lonely, overwhelming place, and most young artists, especially of the African diaspora, don’t know where to start when they graduate. At blackpuffin, we facilitate their integration into the professional art world through our network of collaborators, friends and clients. We curate exhibitions for them, present their art at fairs and help their work get acquired by collectors.

Can you share with us what you having coming up?

My next exhibition is now at the Povos Gallery in Chicago. It is titled 26-18, and it runs from March 22-May 23, 2025. It is a joint exhibition with artist Johannes Sivertson. The exhibition explores themes of migration, citizenship and community through the lens of our experiences as migrants. The exhibition’s title, 26-18, references the two neighborhoods central to both of us as artists, the 26th ward of Chicago where I live now, and the 18th Arrondisement in Paris, where Johannes resides. Through our artwork we are celebrating our resilient communities, and the neighbors and friends that we engage with daily.

Day at the Art Institute, 2025, Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 40 x 30 in