I Had a Dream
Simon Njami presenting AtWork Tour 2018 theme.
What is a dream if not a fantasy?
Still, it would be absurd to reduce this very open notion to a dry definition. In this program, the dream must be understood as a project, as the trigger for changes. At the dawn of any revolution, there is always a “dream”. This is what Martin Luther King Jr meant when he had his own on this unforgettable day that made the Washington great march on August the 28th, 1963 a very special moment. This is what all the people in the world did when the time came to change their lives. I like to use the oxymoron created by the Guinean writer Tierno Monenembo, a “useful dream”, as the title of one of his novels. AtWork aims not only at allowing young people to express their dreams, but attempts to provide them with the right tools that would enable them to achieve them.Those tools are based on critical thinking that alone can allow a distanced reflexion on our conditions. Without that lucidity that takes on board Hegel’s words when he wrote: “we don’t know what we know” it is almost impossible to pose a clear diagnostic of our needs, our limitations and our futures. Knowing oneself, as it was written on the frontispiece of the Delphos temple, is the shortest and the strongest means to enable us to project ourselves into the future. It gives us the energy and the wisdom to question the evidences that is given to us as if it was indisputable truth. This educational program does not seek to transform youths into something they are not, but to help construct a reflexion that is theirs, and that answers, in a personal manner, some of the questions that no school addresses.Instead of telling them what they should do, we invite them to express what they want. There is no other dogma than to force them to find inside themselves, the power to be. It is a school of freedom and social engagement, for, no changes can be achieved by one person alone. If Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr, to name a few dreamers, succeeded in their endeavors, it was mainly because they were able to convince outside of their ego. It is time to tell those kids who represent our future that there is no such a thing as fatalism. We were born what we were born, but we always become what we did. In simple words,
‘I Had a dream” is a call for action, here and now.
After a year of the program and four workshops, one of which took place in Europe, we can finally address the question of the communality of a dream, regardless of its culture and location. At the beginning of the exercise, only few of the “students” could express a dream that would not be directly linked to their daily lives. But, above all, it was reassuring to have a confirmation of the fact that, despite their conditions, all the youth had the same ideas and confused dreams and desires. The exhibition shows the path they went through, before they could express a dream of their own.
Simon Njami is a writer and an independent curator, lecturer, art critic and essayist.
He has published his first novel “Cercueil et Cie” in 1985, followed by “Les Enfants de la Cité” in 1987, “Les Clandestins” and “African Gigolo” in 1989, notably. He wrote two biographies, about James Baldwin and Léopold Sédar Senghor, several short texts, scripts for cinema and documentary films.
Njami is the co-founder of Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art, and he was Visiting Professor at UCSD (University of San Diego California).
After conceiving the Ethnicolor Festival in Paris in 1987, he curated many international exhibitions being among the first ones to think and show African contemporary artists work on international stages. He has served as Artistic Director of Bamako Encounters, the African Photography Biennale, from 2001 to 2007. Njami is the curator of “Africa Remix”, showed in Düsseldorf (Museum Kunst Palast), London (Hayward Gallery), Paris (Centre Pompidou), Tokyo (Mori Museum), Stockholm (Moderna Museet) and Johannesburg (Johannesburg Art Gallery), from 2004 to 2007. He co-curated the first African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He curated the first African Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008, and was the Artistic Director of Luanda Triennale (2010), Picha (Lumumbashi Biennale — 2010), SUD (Douala Triennale — 2010), among others exhibitions and international art events.
The exhibition “The Divine Comedy — Heaven, Hell, Purgatory by Contemporary African Artists” was shown at MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main) from 21 March to 27 July 2014, The SCAD Museum of Art from 16 October to 25 January and at Smithsonian Institution/ African Art Museum, Washington, from 8 April to 1 November 2015.
Simon Njami is the Artistic Director of the Edition 12 of Dak’art, the Dakar Biennale, in Senegal from May, 3 to June 2, 2016 and the Edition 13 of the Dakar Biennale in May-June, 2017. He curated “Afriques Capitales” in La Villette (Paris) and Gare Saint-Sauveur (Lille), in France, showed from March to September 2017.
Invited to be part of numerous art and photography juries, such as the World Press Photo Contest, Njami is the Art Adviser of the Sindika Dokolo Foundation (Luanda) and the Artistic Director of the Donwahi Foundation (Abidjan) and member of the scientific boards of numerous museums.
He is currently advisor of AtWork, an unconentional educational format conceived by him and the Moleskine Foundation.
Discover more on AtWork Program visiting AtWork official website.
This article was originally published in Aprl in April 2019 in Folios n.1 “I Had a Dream”, the Moleskine Foundation cultural publication.
