Omar Victor Diop in London

10/13/2018

Omar Victor Diop, Thiaroye 1944. From Liberty (2016). Courtesy © Omar Victor Diop / MAGNIN-A, Paris

Senegalese artist Omar Victor Diop makes self-portraits with a difference. Both of the series he’s currently showing in London – ‘Liberty: A Universal Chronology of Black Protest’ and ‘Project Diaspora’ – have him assuming the roles of important historical figures in order to shine light on often forgotten moments. In ‘Liberty’ he explores the politics of black resistance by playing characters including African railway workers, Black Panthers, Jamaican maroons and World War II soldiers, while in ‘Diaspora’ he goes farther back in time and plays Africans who changed European history, from the 16th-century saint Bénédicte de Palermo to the 19th-century abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass; who was in fact one of the most photographed people of the day. Together, Diop says, these images tell no less than ‘a reinvented narrative of the history of black people, and therefore, the history of humanity and of the concept of freedom.’

More information at: Autograph