Urban creativity in Dakar: Postcolonial dialogues through art in the city

Abstract

Dakar is a city continuously re-signified and transformed through arts, embodying postcolonial dialogues and serving as a public sphere for speculating African futures. Inspired by Oumar Ndao's multimodal portrait of Dakar as an “uncertain territory” (Ndao, 2020) and Felwine Sarr's philosophical concept of Afrotopia (Sarr, 2019), this article examines contemporary relationships between arts, creativity, urban spaces and the world within a postcolonial city. Through a focus on murals, festivals and film, I illustrate how Dakar operates as “an active utopia”, where artists imagine and rehearse a positive transformation of the continent. Urban creativity in Dakar can thus be defined as a living canvas for postcolonial dialogues and Afrotopian dreams. Murals serve as sites of memory, honouring Senegalese filmmakers and other figures, highlighting their contributions to cinema, the decolonisation of the gaze, and including them in histories that have excluded them. Festivals re-signify ruins of utopia, showcasing artistic work in direct connection with its urban context, reusing, recycling, and rehearsing more balanced futures. Films strengthen social and political critique, addressing tensions within fiction through the re-use of ruins of utopia. Together, these artistic forms offer canvases to envision Sarr's proposition of the Afrotopia, a place and mindset where humanity is central and there is a healthier balance between economic, cultural and spiritual orders.