Medina Yellow : Created by Selly Raby Kane for Colours of Africa

The birth of Medina as a neighbourhood took place in August 1914 when a plague epidemic hit the city of Dakar, which was then under French Colonial rule. Black populations of the Plateau were immediately moved to ‘Xuru Xan’ (Xan Depression), in a new village originally named ‘Ponty-Ville 2’ in reference to William Ponty. An eminent Imam named El Hadj Malick Sy decided to re-name the new village, born under the velleities of segregation. He changed the name from Ponty-Ville 2 to ‘Medina’, as a reference to first Muslim communities that were banished from Mecca.
Medina has grown to become the creative heart of Dakar and Senegal and is the home of contemporary arts, music, sports, literature and cinema. Prominent names of Senegalese art scene were born or influenced by this working class neighbourhood that encapsulates an everlasting memory of the country’s originality.
At night, Medina switches on its signature yellow lights and creates the perfect movie set for conviviality, conversations, laughter and the planting of seeds of ideas. The choice of yellow as our Senegalese colour for this project references alchemy, fertility, vibrance and life force. This space, designed by the French to confine the black populations, has carved its way through time to become a cultural guardian of what might have been lost.
In Medina, language is different, occupation of space is different, in-and-out living is the 'art de vivre' You’ll find houses where Djibril Diop Mambety wrote works of art, others where Amilcar Cabral had his meetings, places where Youssou Ndour grew up, where Fatimata Coulibaly or Anta Mbow create radical and original art programs to keep children out of the streets. This is a place where families ask graffiti artists to treat their facades as a canvas. Eventually there was so much street art that an open-air street art museum in Medina was created. Artists from around the world have come to paint in this curious space.
Art is a way to immortalise Medina’s radicality and to keep its heritage as a source of inspiration, creation and reflection. This becomes the field from which to explore the immensity of all that is possible, from a free and anchored ground.

[@Princejclaude]

Nice 🔥