Serge Alain Nitegeka, 11 May- 30 June Galerie Le Manège Rue Parchappe Dakar, Sénégal. by craniv boyd

Serge Alain Nitegeka, 11 May- 30 June Galerie Le Manège Rue Parchappe Dakar, Sénégal. by craniv boyd

There is an art installation on view in the plateaux district of Dakar, Senegal, on the occasion of the, Off programming of the 10th edition of the Dak'art Biennial. The installation is located at the Galerie Le Manège, of the Institute francaise in Dakar, in participation with Stevenson Gallery of Cape Town, South Africa. This is a review of an impressive lone person exhibition, of a work titled Structural Response 1, of an Burundian Artist participating in that exhibition. Serge Alain Nitegeka.

Imagine, just for yourself, if there were a shoe-box, with popsicle sticks, painted black thrown in it haphazardly, with the top ends of the sticks resting on the open edges of the box, and the bottom ends of the sticks resting in the middle, then you would have a crude provisional example, a rough scale model of what this installation might have looked like, albeit overly simplified. However seeing that the rectangle in question was roughly 50 meters by 30 meters by 5 meters, and all of the sticks in this instance were impressive and cumbersome laths, this installation by Serge Alain Nitegeka, was no small feat, and all of the beams were set at great care. 

Personally I found this work of art to be most striking because it featured black wood, in black africa. The installation was difficult to enter and many of the long black boards wooden boards obstructed entry and passage into the installation. Once inside the work, viewers of this part of the exhibition could move about in a restricted hemmed in way, that was proscribed by Serge Alain Nitegeka. The art installation was a enter at your own risk scenario, and the large five meters high gallery space was filled with these black wooden planks set at various angles. 

Structural Response 1, was not figurative in the least. It had clear formalist concerns in its placement of many units of same black wooden beam all over the space. Hence, Structural Response 1, functioned as a barricade for contemplation. Inside it viewers could observe other viewers moving within and observing the same artwork. The artwork called for some minor athleticism in order to move about it freely, because there were few paths, mostly in the centre of the work, where the planks were not. It was in some ways trap like, and Serge Alain Nitegeka ensnared viewers for some moments in his stark treatment of the volume inside Galerie Le Manège, of Institute francaise.  by craniv boyd.