It was the sunset that first caught Ayofemi Kirby's eyes when she arrived in Dakar. "It's sort of cliché, but I said to myself, if this is the last thing I see, if I close my eyes, I'm fine," she tells OkayAfrica. When Kirby is not taking in the sunset or the cultural brilliance of Dakar, where she has called home for the past two years, she is running Galerie36, a new culture and art space in Dakar.
A small but intentionally conceived space, with a salmon-coloured exterior and a white-walled interior, Galerie36 aims to be an avenue for meaningful cultural exchange and a home for contemporary art and artisanal design emerging from the continent and the Diaspora.
It's a mission that directly aligns with Kirby's multi-pronged background, spanning art, culture, and policy across the United States. "And being here in Dakar with all of its beauty and its history and lineage, I started Galerie36," Kirby says.
Kirby, who has worked in traditional gallery and art spaces from New York to Paris, created Galerie36 as an antithesis to the exquisite but unbearably cold sensibilities of most esteemed conventional art spaces.
"Sometimes the gallerist won't look at you. You walk in, and you're not greeted. There's just no warmth in the experience. It's not every situation, of course, but you know, that's sort of the mystique of the art world that is perpetuated for whatever reason." Kirby says that with Galerie36, she wanted to build something much smaller in scale and, by extension, intimate.
Read the full story at Okay Africa.
