Saleh Lô’s Talibé: Testimony and Material Culture in Everyday Objects

Description

Artist Saleh Lô’s Talibé is a compelling solo exhibition that transforms everyday commodities into evocative portraits, each serving as a vessel of memory and testimony. On globally circulated tomato paste cans, Lô paints and draws the faces of the talibé: Mauritanian boys who are sent to Koranic schools called daaras, where they are subjected to forced labour.

Centred on these children’s experiences, collected through interviews and photography, Lô’s works turn commonplace objects into sites of resistance, revealing harrowing stories beneath their surface. Through immersive installations like “The Red Gold” and collaborative portraits such as “Invisible” and “La Pause,” Lô challenges audiences to urgently look beyond aesthetics and understand the systems of global consumption that enable such exploitation of children.