KABADIO
PERMAKABADIO
Permakabadio is an association, a place of life (called Bindoula) and a training center mainly focused on permaculture and the values that this method advocates. After 20 years of actions in the village under the name of “IEFR”, it is renamed “Permakabadio” in 2017.
Its fight is to fight against the exodus by welcoming young people from the village who are failing at school, those who wish to escape social and family pressures as well as those who have returned to Senegal following an illegal and often dangerous trip to Europe. The association raises these young people's awareness of permaculture and enables them to achieve food and financial self-sufficiency and social fulfilment.
FIRST STAY
In March 2021, I went to take photos for the Permakabadio association which fights against the exodus of young people through permaculture in the village of Kabadio in Senegal.
For three months, my role was to document sporting, cultural, religious and spiritual events as well as the daily life of this small authentic bush village.
I was also able to support projects within the village such as a project on menstrual poverty and we are in the process of organizing the first cultural festival in the village for the beginning of 2022.
EXHIBITIONS
Projects are accelerating, I am shooting for athletes, my network is growing, my vision is clear, I have to leave, travel, create content and chain exhibitions.
March 2021, I'm going to Senegal to support the Permakabadio association. On my return, I exhibit again at the Black sheep with Le Cercle des Artistes and create a new format, 3 days of opening with a musical program included. Several hundred people come to discover my work.
THE BOOK "KABADIO"
This book released in December 2021 following a meeting with a person who told me, in view of the amount of content you have, you have to make a photo book.
I therefore wanted through this book to introduce you to the inhabitants of Kabadio, a small bush village landlocked between Casamance and Gambia.
Discover portraits, life scenes, projects, culture, traditions.
This book is written by me as well as by the locals, I transcribed their words through hours of conversations into voice notes in relation to a simple question: "What is your favorite time of day?"
The subjects retrace a day in Kabadio: school, college, traditions, women, cooking, work as well as the projects set up by the inhabitants around these subjects.
In January 2022, I immediately return to Kabadio to offer them this book of theirs. Forty books are offered to the village and forty for the association in France.
By buying this book, you support the actions of PERMAKABADIO as well as my work which is to support associations in their content creation.
DISTORSIO EXHIBITION
When I return in May 2022, I will co-organize the Distorsio exhibition with the Cercle des Artistes, which will bring together 35 artists. So I decided to tackle a four-by-four meter wall and exhibit a series on a ceremony of initiation into the passage to man, the boukout.
Here you have one of the most intimate traditional ceremonies that I have been able to photograph: the initiation of men from the Diola culture. The Diola culture is known for its ancestral values such as respect for ancestors, nature spirits and social cohesion. It is the most present in Casamance.
Every 30 years, each village organizes an initiation that will last a year in order to introduce young men to the sacred forest and thus become a man. Here, I tried to recreate this ceremony with the background of the Kumpo, the spirit of the forest emblematic among the Diolas. During this ceremony, the initiates must dance and show their strength under the demanding eye of their elders who impress them with their knives which they are insensitive to.
A subject on the duty of masculinity which has always been a fascinating subject for me who has experienced it through my travels and my personal story of having to be a man and that men must be like this and that and those spots.
