Essay in De Groene Amsterdammer
June 10, 2021
Christine Otten wrote a beautiful essay on Voyage à Dakar for De Groene Amsterdammer.
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Researching the post colonial era in Senegal
September 22, 2019
We are back in Amsterdam, continuing the research on Panafricanism and the post colonial era in Senegal, in collaboration with African thinkers, writers, visual artist and scientists. At the Fondation Senghor I received a beautiful comic book Once upon a time there was Senegal and Leopold Sedar Senghor:
Image editing for my book publication
July 1, 2019
At the roof top terrace of our home at Gorée Island, in Dakar, Senegal, I am working on the image editing for my book on the Amsterdam Dakar road trip. A photo book about connecting different worlds, migration, identity, education, parenthood and love. A beautiful graphic design by Rene Put. With contributions by African writers, philosophers and artists.
And wonderful news: the Mondriaan Fund gave a grant for the book publication.
Book on Afghan and Tajik nomads is ready!
August 21, 2015
In the autumn of 2009, a grandmother in the village of Mun, in the Ghund valley of the Tajik Pamir Mountains, approached two young researchers and asked them to write down her old recipes. “I want to share them with my children and grandchildren while I still remember what I know,” she said.
Check the book ‘With our own hands’ by Frederik van Oudenhoven and Jamila Haider, with photos from Matthieu Paley, Theo Kaye and me.
Publication on Timbuktu manuscripts
September 22, 2014
I traveled to Bamako with Liberian writer Vamba Sherif for an article on the manuscripts of Timbuktu in April 2014. The article was published in One World Magazine:
Seduction in Senegal: publication in One World magazine
July 17, 2014
One World magazine published my series on seduction by Senegalese women in the June issue:
My publication “Presence in Absence” is ready!
June 2, 2014
My publication “Presence in Absence” is ready!
Presence in Absence has been published as a multi-fold poster, with a soft linen inside cover, a special binding and a text essay by curator Salah M. Hassan:
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Presence in Absence is a series of new photographs and video-based work by the Dutch photographer Judith Quax, in which she continues to explore African displacement and clandestine migration to the West.
Her intimate portraits of people on both sides of the migration divide – those who managed to leave and made it to the West, and those who stayed behind waiting to be reunited – humanize the subjects and expose their vulnerabilities.
Quax emphasizes how photographs travel and how family albums become the migrant’s deeply personal possessions, in the process becoming a source of longing for families left behind, irretrievable times and lost intimate spaces.
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You can order the book here.
Size: 17 x 24,5 cm, soft linen inside cover, four multifolded posters and seperate text book
Text: Salah M. Hassan
Design: René Put
Publisher: Timmer Art Books
Edition: 250
Price: € 18
Publication in NKA Journal, text by Salah M. Hassan
January 6, 2012
Developing a critical understanding of the wave of new migrations of African people across borders of environments and cultures, as well as modes of resistance, presents an urgent necessity. We must establish platforms for knowledge production to fill in the glaring gaps in understanding the cultural and political dynamics of a world in motion, and to focus on unearthing the root causes and consequences of new migrations in Africa and the West. Situating this phenomenon within historical, sociocultural, and artistic points of view will advance important frameworks for understanding the complexity of migratory flows of a disadvantaged population whose dreams and aspirations for a better life often get curtailed by powerful state practices.
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Each of Quax’s photographs is a stand-alone canvas, in which the artist’s command of the medium transforms the scene into a compelling work of abstraction, while avoiding an over-aestheticizing act that would have compromised the depth of the conceptual aspects of the work. The empty rooms, which have been nicely kept for the most part by the families of these young men, speak volumes of the hopes, sadness, and fear felt by these families as they ponder the destinies of their loved ones beyond the treacherous seas.
Salah M. Hassan is an art critic, curator and Goldwin Smith Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture at Cornell and Princeton University, USA. Together with Okwui Enwezor he founded NKA Journal.