The Passport to Paradise gallery highlights the bold, visual images found all over Dakar by focusing upon the urban visual culture of the Mourides, a Senegalese Sufi movement centered upon the life and teachings of a local saint named Sheikh Amadou Bamba.

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Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana Flanked by Coumba Galwo
Description: In this panel from the Bel-Air factory mural, Papisto Boy shows Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, flanked by Coumba Galwo, a well-known Senegalese recording artist. The term “SET” refers to an urban rehabilitation movement of the late 1980s, of which Papisto was an active proponent. Coumba Galwo is embraced by the staircase and gazes pensively at the “Door of No Return” of the infamous Slave House of Gorée Island. Nkrumah receives a triangular message from God carried by Archangel Gabriel in the form of a dove, while rural dwellings on the right of the image reveal a haunting visage looking toward Nkrumah. “Aïda Souka” is the name of a short film by Mansour Sora Wade (1992), named for the beads that many Senegalese women wear around their waists as an alluring accoutrement. The ram staring at the beautiful woman so identified is an allusion to erotic attraction.
Publication Date: Publication Date Unknown
AODL Contributing Partner: Passport to Paradise
Copyright: Images and text courtesy of the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, and Drs. Mary Nooter Roberts (Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Fowler) and Allen F. Roberts (Professor, UCLA Department of World Arts & Cultures and Director, James S. Coleman African Studies Center).
Author: Author Unknown
Interviewer: Interviewer Unknown

Sampling from L'Institut Fondemental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN)

Phil Curtin Collection

Collection Boubacar Barry

Collection Charles Becker: Recherches et documents sur le Sida

Photographs from “Passport to Paradise’: Sufi Arts of Senegal and Beyond

Mosques of Bondoukou

Futa Toro, Senegal and Mauritania

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