ON VIEW
July 17 - November 14, 2025
Vernissage, July 16 (RSVP)
LOCATION
Virage, Dakar
Map/Hours
Dakar, Senegal — Galerie36 announces its official opening on July 17, 2025, with Meeting Nature, a debut solo exhibition by Senegalese artist Daouda Niane Dit Uda. Located in Virage, a coastal neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal, Galerie36 is a new intimate art space and cultural hub dedicated to contemporary art, cultural exchange, and artisan design of Africa and its Diaspora.
Galerie36 exists to center artists of African and Afro-descended origin who translate their lived experience and inner world into resonant visual forms—artists who see with a particular sensitivity and offer, through their practices, a language for what often goes unspoken, unnoticed, or unacknowledged.
Through its exhibitions, salons, workshops, and readings, Galerie36 intends to cultivate deep encounters—between art and viewer, artist and community, history and the present. It is not a large space by design; it is meant to be close, to invite slowness, presence, and intimacy. And it is grounded in a belief that art is not isolated—it is shaped by, and in turn shapes, the world.
Founded by cultural strategist and entreprenuer, Ayofemi Kirby, Galerie36 brings together Kirby's decades of experience working across arts and culture, civic engagement and social transformation, and with institutions committed to preserving and presenting the stories of Africa and its descendants.
“Galerie 36 is my contribution to the growing, evolving ecosystem of African and Afro-Diasporic art, culture, and histories,” Kirby said. “What we’re doing is not about visibility for visibility’s sake. It’s about resonance. Each artist we work with adds something to the vast and uncontainable story of African and Afro-descended people—a visual language, a fragment, a perspective. This is a place where I believe those fragments can be seen, held, and felt.”
Kirby continues, “I’ve traveled, lived and worked across continents—in North and South America, across Africa, in France and Portugal, the Middle East and Asia. I’ve seen how African and African-descended artists are shaping global culture in ways that are often overlooked, misinterpreted, unfairly contained or categorized. Galerie36 is a space that I hope brings those contributions into greater cultural context—through exhibitions, books, conversations, and workshops that invite people not only to experience art, but to understand and participate in it in collaboration with the artists and with each other."
Opening with Meeting Nature, Uda’s work reflects the very ethos of the gallery. Through meditative line drawings of faceless figures, Uda explores themes of identity, belonging, and our coexistence with the natural world. Uda's art does not demand attention—it invites reflection. It offers viewers a quiet entry point into universal questions about memory, love, transcendence, and who we are beyond what can be seen.
Uda’s drawings, like Galerie36 itself, are a call to slow down and feel. To witness the power of art not as decoration, but as a daily expression of care, of beauty, of meaning.
Through a series of upcoming workshops, visitors will be able to engage directly with artists like Uda—experimenting with materials, reawakening their own creativity, and discovering the stories they carry within. The gallery’s reading tables, curated with books on art, culture, literature, and theory, serves as an anchor—reminding us that we are all part of a larger lineage, and that visual art is just one part of a broader, living conversation.
Galerie 36 Artist Program
The following artists are currently part of Galerie36’s artist program, each offering a distinct visual language rooted in their lived realities, materials, and perspectives:
-
Yusuf Ahmed (Ethiopia/United States) – Yusuf Ahmed is an Ethiopian-American documentary filmmaker, photographer, and communications strategist based in New York City. Yusuf’s work in documentary portraiture and film examines contemporary conditions of globalization and how it impacts the construction of memory, identity, and notions of belonging.
-
Amina Jules Dia (Senegal) – Amina Jules Dia is a Senegalese photographer and writer, born in 2002 in Dakar. Her art primarily revolves around connection, identities, heritage, spirituality, and the quest for self. She is an artist of wandering, of emotion, and of creative freedom.
-
Ibrahima Ndoye (Senegal) – Ibrahima Ndoye, better known as Meureuk—which means sardinella in Wolof—is a Senegalese photographer and filmmaker whose work explores the margins, the intimate, and the tensions between tradition and modernity.
-
Logo Adeymi (Nigeria) – Logo Oluwamuyiwa Adeymi is a Lagos-based photographer and filmmaker. His approach revolves around conceptual and documentary style photography. Logo's interest in visual arts is to be a shrewd observer of the human carnival by capturing and retelling stories from perspectives that are often overlooked, ignored and taken for granted.
-
Doauda Niane Dit Uda (Senegal) – Uda is a Senegalese multidisciplinary artist whose work captures the layered richness of the human experience through gesture, color, and form.
These artists reflect Galerie36’s commitment to supporting creators whose practices are thoughtful, experimental, and rooted in care, complexity, and connection.
Galerie36 officially opens to the public on July 17, 2025 (Opening Reception on July 16), with additional programming and event dates to be announced throughout the season.
For press inquiries, private previews, or interviews, please contact:
press@galerie36.com
To learn more about Galerie 36 and Meeting Nature, visit:
