In Beyond The Periphery of the Skin will feature fifteen photographs, including a selection of new works, to create a dialogue that revolves around the artist’s personal identity.
Who am I? What makes you ‘you’? Such a simple question and yet so difficult to answer. Binta Diaw has always asked herself this question as she wondered what it meant to be an Italian black woman. We understand Diaw’s answers through her art: here we perceive her identity; her daily experiences in Italy; her Italian background and Senegalese origins.
Diaw challenges the typical Western gaze with her art. Growing up and living in Milan, she entered an art world dominated by a prominent white production where afro-descendant Italian artists are labeled with stereotypes. Initially adapting to her surroundings, Diaw has now accepted herself for who she is. Passionately believing in diversity and inclusion, the artist creates an environment to deconstruct and question identity and to explore her position as a black woman in the western world.
Diaw’s works are about compromise; about finding the halfway point between her Italianness and Africanity.
The title Beyond the Periphery of the Skin is inspired by a work of the author Silvia Federici, a sociologist, philosopher and activist who addresses the greater themes of feminism and gender, and in particular the place that the “body” occupies in politics and social practices.
The exhibition is a friendly collaboration with the Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio, Todi (IT).
Binta Diaw (1995) lives and works in Milan (IT).
Binta Diaw's plastic research is part of a philosophical reflection on social phenomena in the form of installations. Binta Diaw's research leads us to explore multiple levels of identity; hers as a black woman in a Europeanized world, ours and that of a continuous crossroads of histories and geographies.
Binta Diaw graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and from ÉSAD in Grenoble.
Her work has been exhibited at School of Water (SMR, 2021); Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (SN, 2020); FSRR (IT, 2020); MA*GA (IT, 2020); Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery (IT, 2020); Savvy Contemporary (DE, 2019).
For additional information: Shara Wasserman, Director of Exhibitions: shara@temple.edu