Sponsored by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and seen in a large gallery measuring 6000 square feet (about 325 square meters), the exhibition concerns a wide range of popular, devotional, healing, musical, architectural, and contemporary arts created by Mourides-a movement based upon the life and lessons of the Senegalese Sufi saint, Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853-1927). Curators Mary Nooter Roberts (Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Fowler) and Allen F. Roberts (Professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures and Director of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center) have conducted nearly ten years of research in Dakar and adjacent cities with Ousmane Gueye, their research associate. The voices and works of visual artists shape the exhibition and its programming.
Activities to accompany the exhibition include "Art and Spirituality in Senegal and the Mouride Diaspora," a talk by the curators on 9 February 2003; "Global Saints, Local Lives: Images and Icons in Urban Space," a major interdisciplinary and interregional conference on 12 April 2003; and a Festival of Senegal in early June, 2003. Mouride artists from Dakar will participate in the opening and April conference.The exhibition and all activities are open to the public free of charge.
Allen and Mary Roberts have also written a book called _A Saint in the City_ (available after February 2003 from the University of Washington Press). It features a preface by Prof. Mamadou Diouf (University of Michigan) and over three hundred color illustrations. A long introduction on the aura of Amadou Bamba (that is, his baraka as well as the iconic power of his images) is followed by a chapter called "Mystical Reproductions: Photography and the Authentic Simulacrum," with reference to the fact that all portraits of the Saint are based upon a single photograph taken in 1913. The talismanic impact of the image is demonstrated in chapters on sanctifying domestic space and an "architecture of the Word," while another chapter discusses glass paintings by Mor Gueye as "visual hagiography." The works of street artist "Papisto" Samb are presented as agents transforming postcolonial memory, and mystical arts of writing and inscription by Massamba Djigal and Elimane Fall heal personal and collective afflictions. The vocal arts of Mouride women are considered, as is the patchwork "dress of devotion" of Baye Falls, a Mouride subgroup. Finally, the works of internationally acclaimed artists Viyé Diba, the late Mustapha Dimé, Chalys Leye, and Moussa Tine are understood for the beauty of their spiritual dimensions, while a final chapter is devoted to pilgrimage to Touba, the sacred city where the Saint is buried, and the Mouride diaspora that now extends from Touba to most corners of the world.