Body painting performances that use colour to recount Transatlantic history.
Drawing on the different uses and meanings of the colours yellow, blue and red in the Americas and in Africa in precolonial periods, the extraction of gold, of Indigo and of cochineal and brazilwood (red) via the work of African and Indigenous slaves in the colonial period, the Transatlantic colours project proposes body paint performances , photography and video-art, that recount Afro-Indigenous Transatlantic history and analyse the relationships between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the present.
The first performance of the series was created by Modou Sall in September 2019, Valencia, Spain.
Modou Sall
Mixing the past and present of the transatlantic relationships through colours on the skin of Modou Sall, the work proposes an original perspective on the theme of migrations over the Atlantic.
Born in Casamance, Senegal, with a father from the Toucouleur culture and a mother from the Jola culture, Modou Sall currently lives in Madrid and came to Spain at 14, in a patera (small boat) crossing the Atlantic. He was lost at sea for 12 days and rescued by the Red Cross. His life and the history of the culture of his country and resistance to the processes imposed by colonisation are some of the themes explored in the video made with Anita Ekman.
Mixing the past and present of the transatlantic relationships through colours on the skin of Modou Sall, the work proposes an original perspective on the theme of human migrations.