One of the great things that could allow a real experience of the process of globalization is the free movement of all people. Regardless of where you want to go, one should be able to do this without hassle. This is the case for me today. I am writing these words in the transit area of Dulles International airport in Washington D.C. I‘m traveling to Bogota. Similarly, a number of citizens of the People‘s Republic of China have the freedom of being in Africa, particularly in Dakar, Senegal where I live and work.

For the purposes of trade, profit and better life, they arrived in Senegal during the past twenty years, and are setting the physicaland spatial contours of their new territory in a specific area the city. An area between the port, the railway station, residential neighborhoods (both middle-class and popular) and downtown. Their presence is more visible and sensible at Boulevard du Centenaire. Hence the title I gave to this series of photographs: Boulevard du Centenaire Made in China This site is not just any site.

 

It is exactly on Boulevard du Centenaire that the newly independent Senegalese Nation celebrates their sovereignty in April 1960. It is also the site of various landmarking political and social protests. To put it in a comparative context, it would be equivalent to African traders taking over Tiananmen Square in Beijing – Something completely unimaginable. It was thus very important for me to show how in the name of trade, a deconsecration of a symbolic space of a city is unfolding.

 

The proliferation of commercial activities of one group of people is redefining the urban landscape with low-end products. As money attracts money, countless small businesses and jobs emerged thank to the presence of the Chinese colony. This, over time, completely disfugured and reconfigured the look of this part of Dakar. As an artist I have the freedom to account of this significant change that bears fundamental questions which inevitably arise from Chinese capitalism geared towards Africa in its whole.

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