8. Mai – 19. Mai 2000, 16 Rue Parchappe, Dakar, Sénégal

The small stores in Senegal, the 'magasins', which sell the things of everyday use on many street corners, are far more than places where only goods are sold. They offer buyers something which is still very rare in Europe: they are places of exchange, information, gossip, joy, meeting.

La Boutique, 16 Rue Parchappe • Angelika Huber & Renate Hampke

You have all that Paul Auster is talking about in "Blue in the face": They are a microcosm of life, here is a focus on all big and small feelings. All the stories of the great world find their correspondence here.

They are also places of chaos and order, they are places of communication, they are places of life where things are offered to life, they are universal places.

La Boutique, 16 Rue Parchappe • Renate Hampke "Seifenobjekt"

Here the separation of work and life, which determines the rhythm of European life, is abolished. In contrast to the sales stamps, in which designers make the purchase an experience, light, noise and odors influence the buyer and the process of acquiring is above the value of the object, yes for the purpose itself, counts here still the commodity itself. The small shops of Dakar form a reservoir of sensual impressions, offering an immeasurable wealth of colors, shapes, smells and noises. They offer everything an artist needs.

La Boutique, 16 Rue Parchappe

Like the goods in these shops, the objects of art also stand alone, they have their value. They do not need the design to work, they do not need the aesthetic staging. In the works of art, chaos and order are crystallized, are objects of communication, expression of all feelings, they show beautiful and ugly - also they are universal. And why not present universal objects in a 'universal place'?

Not the shop is to be brought into the museum and raised to the art-object, for it becomes a museal-solidified art object. However, it is actually the opposite, a place of life. And thus the right place for art.

La Boutique, 16 Rue Parchappe • Peter Gustavus "Objekte"

These ideas were the starting point for the project organized and curated by Abdoulaye Guissé and Peter Wollenweber of Quarts e.V. at the Dak'art 2000.

The Dak'Art Biennale is an event that, like art events and art spaces all over the world, passes by many inhabitants of the city. Why should art not even go where it originally came from outside galleries, museums and cultural centers?

And why should not everyone ever acquire art? Small things that are simply fun, which perhaps inspire thought, which are beautiful, which can be playful and even sometimes useful.

Artists involved: