Regards du Sénégal

Souwèr de la collection Afric.Art

In West Africa, reverse glass painting developed primarily in Senegal. This popular art form, known by the Wolof term souwèr (also spelt suwer), was introduced from the Maghreb and the Middle East at the end of the 19th century. It spread to the country’s urban centres via Arab and Berber merchants, as well as marabouts and Senegalese Muslim scholars returning from pilgrimages. The images, copied by anonymous painters, tell the epic story of Islam and depict the followers of the Prophet and saints. Souwèr later developed into a means of shaping and expressing identity, featuring the great local figures of the Muslim brotherhoods and resistance to French colonisation. In the 1960s, around the time of independence, a new repertoire of imagery was developed under the impetus of some artists who introduced secular themes. The exhibition features a number of Senegalese artists who express their creativity by revisiting this iconographic heritage. Their work stands out from the trends of the tourist market and mass production. Part of the Afric.Art collection, assembled by Marianne Berna, the selection of work reflects the sensibility of a woman collector from Zurich whose interest in street art dates back to the late 1990s. As a frequent traveller to Senegal, she documented workshops in Dakar in the course of her encounters with painters.

As part of the exhibition, the Vitromusée Romont is offering a reverse glass painting course led by Senegalese painter Azou Bade on 14 July 2024. The artist will also be present at the museum on 7 July 2024 for a demonstration of the technique. These are two unique opportunities to meet an artist who has been creating souwèr for over 30 years. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dakar, he lives and works in Saint-Louis (Senegal). Places on the course are limited, so registration is required.

Opening of the exhibition with a talk by Marianne Berna in German and French:
16 March 2024, 3pm, registration at [email protected]
Collector Marianna Berna will present the painters she met in Dakar and whose workshops she documented, and will talk about the Senegalese technique of reverse glass painting.

In the press

17 March – 29 September 2024