
Laye Thioune is born in Dakar, Senegal. He lives and works in Dakar, in SICAP Liberté 5. He graduated from the National School of Arts (ENA) in Dakar in 2013 in Music. He continued his studies in the same school in Visual Arts, where he graduated top of his class in 2020.
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SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)
2024: Les Traversées - Crossings, aKAZI, Atlanta, GA, USA
2020: New Africa, Dakar, Senegal
2019: New Africa, Dakar, Senegal
2016: Workshop at Musée d'Art Africain Théodore Monod, Dakar, Senegal
SCHOLARSHIPS & PRIZES
2024: Winner of the Africa Prime Initiative Scholarship for Emergents Artists
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GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)
2024: OFF Biennale de Dakar, Loman Art, Senegal
2024: Soppiku - Metamorphosis, Loman Art, Dakar, Senegal
2023: Blue Biennale - International Visual Art Biennale, Brașov, Romania
2023: Gorée Regards sur Cours, Ile de Gorée, Senegal
2022: Les Rencontres Sur Le Fleuve, Saint-Louis, Senegal
2019: Fesmirafrica, Musée d'art africain Théodore Monod, Dakar, Senegal
2018: OFF Biennale de Dakar, L'Ile de Ngor, Senegal
2018: Les Rencontres Sur Le Fleuve, Saint-Louis, Senegal
2017: Fesmirafrica, Gorée et Dakar, Senegal
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His artistic sensitivity manifested at a very young age, as with all people who seek a way and a way out but without knowing how to channel it. He tried his hand at several professions and lived life with all the ups and downs but also with the joys it brings, always driven by his infinite kindness and his big heart.
First, he studied at the National School of Arts in Dakar, but in music, and upon his graduation, he set up a group that performed on several stages in Senegal and published a CD.
Still searching for himself, he re-enrolled in the same school, but this time for studies in visual arts, from which he graduated first in his class. Since then, he has enjoyed his life as a visual artist, alternating between painting and sculpture in an intensely colorful universe.
He has exhibited several times in Senegal, notably at Regards sur Cours in Gorée in 2023, and was also selected for the Blue Biennale in Romania in 2023.
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Laye Thioune practices both painting and sculpture, depending on his inspiration. By a surprising contrast, he only paints faceless characters and only sculpts faces without bodies, one being able to compensate for the other in an endless back and forth.
His works are generally very colorful and, therefore, appealing, but what emerges curiously is a form of stoicism combined with a diffuse melancholy, which might have its roots deep in the artist's experience. This succession of contrasts and the questions it raises in us exert a form of inexplicable fascination. His characters, observed from the front or the back - one never knows - give the impression of tiptoeing. Yet, it is not tranquility that they exude, but rather a form of instability, so characteristic of the artist's search and our search for meaning in our lives.
Likewise, his masks, which we must remember that the primary function is to hide, to disguise reality, are rarely smiling and happy without ever expressing sadness, a clever balance between more and less, too much and not enough.
You have to enter this universe and let yourself be carried away by the artist’s extraordinary and brilliant sensitivity.
Dakar, 2023