Born and based in Dakar, Cheikha Bamba lives in Brussels where he teaches at ERG. He founded SIGIL in 2004 and is the artistic director of Espace Médina, an independent space at the heart of the city’s cultural life.  For MAD Parcours, Cheikha enters Casual/Tease, the Brussels chapter of The Memorial for Those Who Did Not Fall in War at Cloud Seven, presenting Sous le regard de la jupe de ma mère… un autre regard, a monumental dress installation born from the experience of African mothers who have had to send their young children to war. Visitors are invited to put their heads beneath an enormous skirt and return, for a moment, to a very basic childhood memory: hiding beneath our mother’s dress, perhaps the first shelter we ever knew. But the dress is full of holes shaped like faces. What should conceal and protect suddenly exposes, opening that childhood refuge onto the systematic vulnerability of children to war.

Program:

Thursday 12 November – MAD Parcours: Opening

• 12:00-21:00 Unveiling of Sous le regard de la jupe de ma mère… un autre regard, a monumental dress installation by Cheikha Sigil
• 16:30-17:30 Meet & Greet: Cheikha Sigil

Saturday 14 November – Casual/Fashion

• 12:00-18:00 Exhibition visit with the mediators
• 16:30-17:30 Meet & Greet: Cheikha Sigil
• 18:00-18:30 Pi Wos: Dance Performance
  Sous le regard de la jupe de ma mère… un autre regard
• 18:30-19:00 Cloud Bar

For Casual/Fashion, Senegalese dancer and choreographer Pi Wos joins Cheikha Sigil for a dance performance conceived in dialogue with Sous le regard de la jupe de ma mère… un autre regard, Sigil’s monumental dress installation inspired by African mothers whose children have been sent to war. A former dancer with the National Ballet of Senegal and founder of PIAMART, Pi Wos enters into a physical dialogue with the monumental dress, exploring the encounter between two bodies, one seeking protection, the other unable to guarantee it.

Free admission. Registration is advised for Saturday 14 November.