We are pleased to share news of a major new collaboration between Cove Park and RAW Material Company, made possible with support from British Council Scotland’s and Creative Scotland’s Connect & Collaborate fund. RAW Material Company is a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal; its trans-disciplinary programme is organised around residencies, biannual symposia, public projects and exhibitions.

This new artist residency and institutional exchange represents the first collaboration between Cove Park and an organisation based in West Africa. It is also the first time RAW Material Company has worked with a partner in Scotland. In the late summer and autumn of 2021 Cove Park will host a Senegalese artist connected to RAW Material Company’s programme and, in parallel with this, an artist from Scotland will work in Dakar for six weeks. To ensure our collaboration can develop beyond 2021, this project also includes a staff exchange to enable both organisations to learn from each other and create new projects for the future.

Born in 1976 in Saint Louis, Senegal, Ibrahima Thiam studied economics in Dakar. Following a workshop organized by Goethe-Institute during the Month of Photography at Dakar in 2009, he found his passion for photography. Self-taught, he is interested in memory, archives, African orality as well as myths and legends. Ibrahima collects pictures, including some from his family archives, his family archives which helps shape his imagination. Recently, he has also been developing a process that highlights the deities of the Lebu communities.

His work was featured in several national and international group exhibitions, including: Raw Material Company, Dakar, Senegal, (2020), The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives From Senegal, Zuccaire Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook University, New York, USA Unis (2019), Gallery Eulenspiegel, Bale, Switzerland, (2017), Bronx University, New York, United States (2016) as well as Telling Time during the 10th edition of the Bamako Meetings, African Biennial of Photography (2015). He lives and works between Saint Louis and Dakar.