Cheikh Ndiaye, Archives of the Sun Part II

Cheikh Ndiaye
Archives du Soleil / Archives of the Sun
first monograph of the artist
332p.
23 x 29 cm
hardcover with cloth binding and foil stamp print
in French and in English (bi-lingual edition)
ISBN: 978-2-9569056-2-2
Contributors: Manthia Diawara, Alain Badiou, Alicia Knock, Jana Ndiaye Berankova, Vincent Jacques, Valentine Umansky
The book includes the transcript of the discussion between Mamadou Diouf, Étienne Balibar and Alain Badiou.
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Suture Press is pleased to present Archives of the Sun/Archives du soleil, the first comprehensive monograph on the contemporary artist Cheikh Ndiaye, which includes reproductions of all of his paintings and installations. Ndiaye portrays urban environments in Africa and regions marked by the presence of the African diaspora. In his paintings, he often depicts former movie theaters and informal vendors’ kiosks in Africa as well as cinematographic and archival images which point to the pictorial beauty of the African continent. Ndiaye’s work subtly interrogates the current state of the dream of Independence, the role of the archives, and our ability to recollect memory images.
In addition to more than 200 pages of color illustrations, the book includes contributions by scholars, filmmakers, curators, and philosophers. It proposes a multiplicity of possible interpretative approaches towards Ndiaye’s work, thus emphasizing the inherent ambiguity of any great art. The filmmaker and historian of African cinema, Manthia Diawara, gives a personal and poetic testimony on the artist’s work while reading it through the lens of Édouard Glissant’s writings. The philosopher Alain Badiou interprets Ndiaye’s work as an example of “figurative abstraction” while this notion is questioned by philosopher Étienne Balibar and historian Mamadou Diouf in a discussion about Badiou’s text. In the interview with Valentine Umansky, curator of international art at Tate Modern, Ndiaye speaks of the role of archives and museums in Africa while describing painting as a practice of retreat. Alicia Knock, curator at Centre Pompidou, emphasizes the African context of the artist’s work while also reminding us of the latter’s passion for the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. The philosopher Vincent Jacques speaks of the connection between the haptic and optic qualities in Ndiaye’s work, while the essay by Jana Ndiaye Berankova, philosopher and architecture historian, questions the links between painting and architecture.
The book is published as a bi-lingual (French and English) hardcover edition including two different kinds of graphic paper. Its black matt cloth binding contrasts with the shiny foil-stamp print on the cover and spine of the book. The cover includes an integrated reproduction of one of the artist’s paintings.