Exclusive Interview: Modou GUEYE opens up about his path as an artist and how his Senegalese identity influences his work.
Modou Gueye
Modou Gueye’s portraits explores on identity, roots, and heritage.
Through this series of questions, he opens up, in all sincerity, about his path as an artist, his sources of inspiration and his vision of art as an act of memory and resilience.
Can you share a bit about your background and how your upbringing influenced your path as an artist?
I was born in Senegal, in Pikine, and grew up in an environment where words, gestures and everyday objects all had symbolic significance. The world of mats on which we slept and told stories to each other in the evenings left a deep imprint on me. My upbringing, imbued with respect for elders, rituals of transmission and community values, shaped my view of the world. It was on these mats, often in silence, that I learned to observe, to feel, to draw in my head even before holding a pencil.
Portrait by Modou Gueye
How does your Senegalese identity (or your cultural heritage) influence your work?
Africa runs through my work. Not a “folklorised Africa”, but a living, current Africa, rooted in its past and tending towards its future. The geometric patterns, the plaited hairstyles, the direct or inward gazes of my characters: all this comes from my cultural heritage. Each mats represented is a metaphor, each coloured background a reference to a fabric, a memory. In ‘Echo des racines ’, for example, the hair becomes branches, antennae: these are our ancestors who continue to speak to us.
Do you work intuitively, or do you plan each piece meticulously?
I’d say I start with intuition, but end with rigour. The idea of a face or a composition often comes to me all at once, like an illumination. But then comes the painstaking, sometimes even obsessive, work to ensure that the background, the texture of the skin, the intensity of the eyes – all these elements interact harmoniously. It’s a bit like a braid: it starts with a loose strand, but ends in a precise shape.
Portrait by Modou Gueye
Which of your pieces do you feel most connected to, and why?
Probably to ‘L’élégance du silence’. There’s a silent language that I recognise in this posture, in these arms crossed over the chest. It’s the silence of waiting, of reflection, of meditation. The model’s expression still moves me today, because it reminds me of my own mother, sitting in silence, thinking of a thousand things I could never guess.
How do you think art can contribute to conversations around identity, community, or justice?
Art is a voice without violence. It can tell, repair, reveal. By interweaving individual stories with collective histories, I think we can open up profound dialogues. My portraits are political without claiming to be so: they affirm a black beauty, an African memory, a dignity. They say: ‘we are here, we have a history’.
Portrait by Modou Gueye
What do you hope your legacy will be in the world of art?
Sincere, grounded, demanding art. I’d like my canvases to be places of memory, living surfaces where we can still breathe in traces of humanity. Let people say: ‘He dared to speak the silences, he gave shape to the invisible’. That would be my legacy: to have left an imprint interwoven between art, memory and respect for the living.
