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This volume is the first critical and comprehensive publication on the Senegalese artist, curator and activist, El Sy, who is one of the most significant figures in African contemporary art. Not only has his innovative practice as a painter, performance artist, stage designer and curator shaped the art scene in Dakar since the late 1970s, but he is also internationally recognized as a leading protagonist of conceptual and politicized art collectives in Africa including the Laboratoire Agit´Art and Tenq.
This publication is the first art historical analysis that contextualizes his work and connects it to notions of resistance and activism in post-Independence Africa. It includes new essays by internationally renowned art historians, writers, and curators as well as unseen archival material. It places El Sy´s activities within the framework of Senghorian post-Independence aesthetics, artists´ collectives in Africa, and Senegalese-German post-war relations. This publication offers a rare insight into intellectual and activist art practice in Africa prior to the "Global Turn" of 1989.

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"El Hadji Sy: Painting, Performance, Politics" offers the first art-historical survey on the multidimensional work of Senegalese artist, curator, and cultural activist El Hadji Sy ( 1954, Dakar). Spanning thirty years of his practice as a painter, performance artist, and founder of numerous artists´ collectives and workshops in Dakar (Laboratoire AGIT´ART, Tenq, Village des Arts), it provides an unprecedented insight into the conceptual and aesthetic framework of a major living artist and curator from West Africa.

With newly commissioned essays and interviews by Hans Belting, Clémentine Deliss, Mamadou Diouf, Julia Grosse, Yvette Mutumba, Philippe Pirotte, and Manon Schwich and unique archival material including manifestos, documents and over four hundred illustrations.

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"As a founder of the notorious collective Laboratoire AGIT´art, and a curator of numerous artist-led workshops and studio spaces in Dakar, Sy´s interdisciplinary practice represents a ground-breaking position within the context of post-Independence Africa." Contemporary And

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