A few words about your artistic career
I'm a self-taught photographer. In my association Africulturban, I learnt the basics of cinema as part of a project called Hip Hop Academy for two years. But after that I was drawn to photography, so I took part in lots of workshops and masterclasses to perfect my skills.
How long have you been an artist?
I've been taking photographs for 8 years now.
Why did you apply for this scholarship? How will the scholarship support you?
For the last 6 months, I've been looking for funding to release my book-photo 'ISSUE DE SECOURS'. So when I was sent the call for applications, I thought it might be an opportunity for me to release a digital version of this project.
What are your concrete artistic objectives after this residency?
After this residency, I'll have my website well organised and I'll have incorporated a photo gallery. This will give you access to exhibitions of my forthcoming projects from the comfort of your own home.
What did you achieve during this creative residency? What is the result (work created)?
During the residency I was able to create my website, finalise the texts (dialogues), have them corrected by various people and communicate about my work.
The result is a book/photo about sexual violence and resilience. The book will be available to download from my website.
Many people were involved in the creative process. For the photos, there was artistic director Willy Kemtane, Mamadou Ly in charge of lighting, Fatima Ndiour in charge of stage management and Malick Faye in charge of make-up. Then for the lyrics, there's Keyti (Rapper, Journal Rappé), Bigué Bop (Journalist at Le Quotidien) and Oumar Sall on the proofreading. Fatou Kandé Senghor wrote the foreword.
Then Fatou Mbacké created the website and Sall Ngaary did the graphics. Ibrahim Ndiour did the teaser and Samira did the vocals.
**How do you feel these activities are helping you to reflect on the world today, in relation to the COVID-19 crisis, and/or on building for the future?
The crisis has forced us to look for alternatives, to rethink the way we do things, the way we think, the way we create.
So I think that activities like these are a great help to artists at the moment. But I think that even if the crisis ends one day and we're able to do everything as before again, we should add these methods to the ones we used before.
How did you feel during the residency? And afterwards?
I found it hard to concentrate on my work alone. But I've been working on it for two years now, so I can't believe I've finally got it right. I've managed to make it as I imagined it. There are a lot of people involved, so it wasn't easy to get people on board, especially as it's a long-distance project. Correcting the texts took a lot more time. But we ended up getting everything done in time.
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Discover the work of Ina Makosi
