Djibril Drame
Different ways
Photography on cotton linen
120 x 80 cm
2020
Courtesy of the artist and Dada Gallery

Djibril Drame is a Senegalese visual artist based in Dakar. After living in Los Angeles for several years, he moved back to his home city with the resolute ambition to create works that shed light on socially relevant and potentially controversial issues affecting our world today. His work often reflects the various aspects of Africa’s multifaceted history and innumerable intertwined cultures. 

In his series Durag Is Spiritual which consists of eleven photographs in total, Drame explores the relationship that two black communities, separated by an ocean, have with what may seem like mere cloth, but in reality holds more power than an outsider can imagine. Drawing on his experiences living in the United States and Senegal, Drame sees durag as a garment and cultural symbol with functions beyond simply protecting African American men’s hair or accessorizing their outfits. The artist through these powerful visuals unveils that the spiritual charges and importance conferred to the durag are of the same order as those of the Murid outfit. By composing these tender images that feature two male subjects in golden hour on the shores of what may be the same ocean that separated them, the artist emphasizes his belief that the spirituality of the durag is a “crossroad between the African American experience and the African Sufi experience”.

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