Born in 1991 in Milan (Italy)
Lives and works BETWEEN Dakar (Senegal), Milan (Italy) and Zurich (Switzerland)

Adji Dieye explores the role of culture and imagination in how the national identities of previously colonised countries are built, and interrogates the political rationales that shape a country’s self-representation.

Maggic Cube borrows the visual features of a famous brand of stock cube, a condiment invented and exported by European companies, and which has become a staple ingredient in West African cookery through constant heavy advertising. The artist’s photos and videos thus expose soft power as a form of neo-colonialism. She also pays tribute to studio-based portrait photography, popularised in the 1950s-60s by Malian and Senegalese artists and introduced to the Western art market with a heavily exotic marketing slant. Adji Dieye’s work tends to re-examine elements that are now viewed as traditional in Western African cultures but which turn out to be closely entwined with a ubiquitous European influence.