On & Off the Record: Talking to Modou Dieng

Passing through New York on his way back to the West Coast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with artist Modou Dieng. Born in Saint-Louis, Senegal, Dieng earned his BFA from the Senegal Art School in 1995 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006. Dieng has had solo exhibitions at IFAN Museum in Dakar (2000) and Pascal Polar Gallery, Brussels (2003) to name a few. Group exhibitions include the Biennale Dak’Art ’02, Dakar; Globalization and the African World at Gettysburg College (2003); Art Paris, Carroussel du Louvre, Paris (2003), and Here and There, Casa Encendida Museum, Madrid (2005).

From Chuck Berry to Bob Sinclar, Rodin to Warhol, Bono to James Brown, Dieng’s vinyl record sculptures were the launch pad for a wide-ranging dialogue concerning individual and aesthetic notions of resistance and transformation in art, fashion, and music.

Nicole J. Caruth: One of the first things I noticed about your vinyl [record] sculptures is their distinct resemblance to textiles or clothing patterns—the way lines and geometric shapes sit atop the surface. Then I honed in on the neckties that seem to underscore this. Are you influenced by or are you intentionally referencing the fashion industry?

Modou Dieng: I love fashion. Being an artist, when you cook or when you dress, in a way you’re always thinking about how you present yourself. Likewise, if you are a musician you are very careful about how you present yourself. The style, the look is really important. With my artwork, it\'s like I\'m dressing them. Working with vinyl [records], painting or a collage, it\'s always about how to dress them first. So I construct the work [seeing] the color as something wearable.

[In terms of vinyl], to me music goes with fashion. We can\'t imagine living in a world in which you can\'t hear music. For example, if you watch a movie you are going to understand whatever is going on through the music first - the soundtrack. [Likewise,] if you go to a fashion show you also have the soundtrack on the runway. So to me music [and fashion] really goes together.

NJC: Do you then see these collages as having their own personalities or as characters?

MD: Yes, very much so. That\'s funny, because I used to think that all my work - and I still do - is [made] after a friend or someone [familiar]. Doing that is to connect the work to that person’s identity, that character I know. And yes from that, definitely, each piece is its own entity.

NJC: So when you have all of them in a gallery together what do they say to you? Do you see them as speaking to one another or do they become something else all together?

MD: …Maybe [one] can walk in the gallery and see some interaction, because they have all been made in the same space with the same tools, but I don\'t like to see them like that. I really like to have them stand for who they are or what they are. Like for example, the last show I did [had] only four pieces.

One was called Hendrix HairCut, after Jimi Hendrix. One was Jean-Michel, meaning Jean-Michel Basquiat, because [the work was influenced by] one of his portraits. Yeah, they don\'t know each other, but of course in history - Black history- Jimi Hendrix and Basquiat, mean something. To me, I see an interaction, but in a different way because they are both black young men that were super talented and died young. So those can be [connected] for me making the work, but they’re two [separate] entities.

NJC: When did you start working with vinyl records?

MD: I did a show in Madrid in 2006. Before that I was in Paris and I bought a bunch of vinyl at the flea market there. I didn\'t buy vinyl before, because I already had the music [in another format], but I liked the fact that I found [these things] in vinyl.

Before that I was using vinyl on paintings but they were just not…so I took those records I bought in Paris -it was more about the trip, the quality and the aesthetic [of the record] than really the music or the song- so I made a piece with it.

NJC: Did you ever DJ?

MD: I did. Growing up music was really important for me, because I grew up in a French set up. Whether I was in Senegal or going to France it was always the French system…and I didn\'t like it. [laughs]

You have the history [and] the structure of power that was set. I went to a French school meaning that I was a minority even though it was in my country [Senegal]. As a [young] boy it kind of educated me in being a minority; being an outsider even though I had everything everyone else had. It was in a French school in Africa and the [school] system followed the whole system in which the French were the authorities. So yeah, it kind of educated me in that sort of struggle that black people in other places went through. At that time I really didn\'t [make this connection]. I just knew that this [way] was kind of bizarre.

So when I was maybe around 12 or 13 years old, I started to become really curious about other things, people and other cultures. I had become really curious about American music and African American music. To me at the time it was just Americans -Black Americans- playing music. I didn\'t know the whole politics around it. I just liked it because I felt like that music was speaking to me. I started following what was going on [in the US] through the music - funk, ska, jazz or whatever. From 13 to maybe 17 years old, I was really into that.

[Hearing] James Brown at that time, or Jimi Hendrix, was a big thing; even though I didn\'t know what they were saying, I knew what it was. It was a privilege to be in the position of knowing about American, Jamaican or British music and it became my thing. That was my secret [way] to escape whatever I was going through. So it stayed in me. When I went to college, I actually dropped out for a year and worked with musicians promoting music. It was a way of just being in the game, being a part of the music, the making, the producing. There I learned how to mix and DJ and stuff like that. I really don\'t do it as a job, but any time I have the opportunity to do it, I DJ.

Another part that is important [to my work] is that I got to really know music. You play it, you hear it and you enjoy it, but if you are into that scene and you work with musicians, you end up really knowing -- music becomes object. Whether it’s a guitar or a drum set, you know that [a particular] sound [and energy] can only come out of this [instrument], so you start really putting a visual to music.

When I moved from music and went to doing art, I took that with me - hearing, seeing music, taking music as an object. That\'s why I started incorporating fliers, a record or a record cover or an instrument [into my work]. It\'s always a reference to music.

NJC: I’m wondering how the French system was structured and what role it played in music in Senegal and how you think or once thought about music?

MD: It\'s a good question, because today in Senegal it is different. It\'s a free country - even then it was a free country- but it was a young country so it\'s different.

But one thing about the culture in general was- whether it was music, art, literature or the performance theater- it was a system built around [promoting] the French through the display of their cultural centers and institutes -- certain types of music, painting or literature. That was pretty much, for a time, the center of the cultural industry [in Senegal]. Then you had the periphery, which was more about people interacting with other countries in the Caribbean, the US or other African countries. But that wasn\'t really a big music industry. It was just people trying to open up.

To me, the center -- the French- I associate that with my growing up, so I was never really interested in pursuing that relationship. That\'s what kind of drove me towards African American and American music and later other kinds. Today it\'s over because France went through its own struggle in the late 80s, early 90s. They couldn\'t keep up with the country’s growth. Now it\'s a different dynamic.

NJC: Do you consider yourself a painter or a sculptor or do you choose not to categorize yourself?

MD: I don\'t know. That\'s a good question. [laughs]

NJC: Well, that\'s the answer…but do you prefer one medium over another? Do you find yourself drawn to paint more than you are to say…

MD: Yeah, I used to be very stubborn about being a painter, to make the point “I am a painter.” [laughs] Now, I\'d rather just think of myself as an artist. I love painting, as you know, but I\'m not talking about doing it - I just enjoy painting.

I went to Philadelphia at the end of December [2006] and I stopped by to see the Rodin Museum. I bought two books there on his drawings, his studies. Since then I am making drawings. I don\'t know if I\'m going to show them, but I am working on them right now.

I do video on the side sometimes. I do intervention sometimes-- just put something on the wall or out on the street-- but I don\'t show them usually. I just show my paintings because I still kind of like to be seen as a painter, but I think it’s going away.

NJC: I was reading something in your statement about the built environment and a city’s influence on you. How does [a city] affect your work?

MD: It all goes back to me dealing with being an African who went to a French school in Africa. Usually when you\'re African, people in Africa or people with a certain social status, see you as simple. When people think of Africa and Africans they don\'t think of modern people.

I am African, but I am in the city. What I know is the city and all my work is about that. Whether it is with musicians or whether it is fine art or writing poetry, [my work] was always talking about the struggle of being African, but urban because we were not on the map. We were just invisible, because people outside of Africa see Africa as a place of suffering.

When I became an adult, it was like this: you are an African male that went to a French school, so you\'re with the French, but a step below. You are [seen as] cheating or hiding who you are, because you are embarrassed of who you are as an African; you try to assimilate yourself into another culture.

It was important to me, because at the time my statement was, \"We are African. We are urban.\" In Africa you have people who don\'t know anything about the wild life, the countryside, people who have never seen a snake or a giraffe and who always stay in the city. If they go somewhere it\'s going to be in the city. It has its own reality and its own struggle like any city in the world.

Dakar [Senegal] is a wild city. Dakar is crazy. Dakar is like Paris or Brussels. It\'s just like a big city with anything you would find in any city. The generation before us of artists and musicians, they were just moving into the city because the city was just being built. They didn\'t have the reality of city [life], so my generation had an edge.

My thesis was about walls, but walls as support of expression. Whether it was graffiti in New York, protest on walls in Johannesburg or the Berlin wall, it was about walls. At that time also, you had a big movement in Dakar, which was a lot of young artists starting hip-hop and doing graphics and backdrops for concerts. I had my connection to the music scene there, so I ended up being in the middle of that.

NJC: Who were some of your biggest influences in black American music? You mentioned James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.

MD: Hmm…Chuck Berry…Little Richard. The generation I really connect myself with was the generation of the James Brown, Jimi Hendrix [and] of course John Coltrane. I moved away, let\'s say, from Michael Jackson and I don\'t think it is because of him but it is more that I was just interested in something else.

NJC: Was Michael Jackson big on the scene at the time you were discovering American music?

MD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was Michael Jackson and Madonna- they were the pop stars, that [everyone in] Senegal knew about - but the [majority] didn\'t really know, for example, Hendrix or Coltrane -- they were more rebellious figures.

NJC: You talked about people outside of Senegal perceiving all Africans [as living] out in the countryside or wilderness when some have never even seen a snake. That was then. Do you think that\'s changed?

MD: Oh yeah. I think that period is over, because today you have Africans everywhere, all over the Western world. Before it wasn\'t that obvious. Also you have a bunch of Americans going into Africa through Fulbright or exchange programs within their school or whatever, so you have more connection. Senegalese or Francophone Africans are stepping away from France and Europe and more interested in living here [in the United States].

You also have the networks like National Geographic, CNN, all of those media, which broadcast now from Africa, but more from cities - not from the “wild side.” Then you have the actions of people like Bono. He talks about Africa in a very, “these guys are my buddies” kind of way. It\'s not like Live Aid, or…what is it…the one Michael Jackson did in the \'80s? At that time, Africa was about the poor, the children and disease. Today someone like Bono is going to talk about Africa not in those terms, but more like, “We have to invest there. We have to put Africa on the global map. We have to call these corporations to do this or that.” So it\'s more about a strategy [for development]. It\'s more about geopolitics than just helping people in this ‘lost land.’ So all of those things have changed the mentality- the perception.

NJC: It\'s interesting that you bring up Bono. I was just looking at a picture of him with Bob Sinclar and I wonder, about Sinclar being French, and a DJ, often working with black or African musicians, what kind of influence he may have?

MD: Yeah, Bob Sinclar is a very interesting phenomenon in the Paris scene. Bob Sinclar is the type of guy like me. He’s French, but got sick of the French system and moved toward the British system. He started taking the train and going to London and buying his music and trying to find DJs.

He is more connected to the British pop scene than the French scene. So he is of my generation and he is more like, \"I don\'t want it. I don\'t want this French bullshit anymore.\" So he found his thing with…it\'s like a generation of rebellion in France. You have for example, the riots last year, those kids. It comes and goes every 10 years. It\'s like having a new, young population who can\'t deal with what\'s going on. It\'s just too old- so 19th-century- and people are still there trying to use the French system.

NJC: We keep talking about music…

MD: I like it. [laughs]

NJC: But you talk about sampling, appropriation and intervention and going back to your collages or paintings. What form [does] that take visually or how [does] that otherwise play out in your work?

MD: It\'s interesting, because when I work, I listen to a lot of music. I cannot work without music, you know.

Of course, I am coming from this culture, this urban culture, which does a lot of recycling. If you look at the history of black music, African American music, from bebop to now, there is a lot of that. With each generation, every 20 to 25 years, you have a recycling… something comes to hip-hop [from the past].

You also have the idea of archiving…and I think a lot about that when I do my work. That\'s why I talk about sampling and all of that, because to me it’s referencing music.

...What\'s funny is the reason I had a hard time responding [to your questions about] top black American musicians, is because where are you, for example, going to put Charlie Parker? Knowing that Charlie Parker made Miles Davis, Coltrane, Herbie Hancock…and without those guys would we even have 50 Cent today?

I like different artists for different reasons. It doesn\'t mean that they are good or they are the best, no…

NJC: But for what they represent.

MD: Yes. In art I love Picasso, for example. He is white. He is European. He didn\'t admit that he worked with masks, but the bottom line is that he was an artist who saw a beautiful thing and that beautiful thing really had an effect on him. He did the work from there. It doesn\'t matter if he\'s male or white or European and stealing from a black culture. What matters is that he’s human. He is a man. He went to see a show and he loved it and just couldn\'t get rid of it. He had to do something with it. I find that very, very, very powerful and beautiful, because whether he admitted it in his life sitting with other people, the true thing is that in his studio, before his canvas he did admit it. That\'s the truth.

I love Rodin. I love Basquiat - both for different reasons, though I can see a connection. The connection I see within Rodin is that he was a powerful guy in the sense that he portrayed reality. When you see sculptures from the Renaissance, whether they are male or female, they are very soft and very European. From this, what Rodin added to sculpture was the roundness of the land and the skin. Those elements are very much how I see black people and Africans. In most of Rodin’s sculptures the color is black or dark green. Yeah, the features are white, but when I see the body it\'s black. That\'s what I love about it and it\'s very powerful - people connecting their selves to the land, connecting themselves to what\'s round, what\'s real, what\'s them, you know?

I love Andy Warhol. He added glamour and fashion to [art], glamour, funniness and character. I identify with that a lot.

Visit Modou’s website at www.modoudieng.com

Interviewer Nicole J. Caruth is Manager of Interpretive Materials at the Brooklyn Museum. A graduate of the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, her freelance writing and curatorial projects concentrate on contemporary visual art and culture. She is a regular contributor to Might Be Good , www.fluentcollab.org/mbg, a bi-weekly e- journal for contemporary art. Visit Nicole\'s blog, Contemporary Confections .