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"CAAX", 2018 BY PAULA ANTA
VAT not included
Caax, 2018
Khamekaye Series
Paula Anta
Photography
Edition of 5
The Khamekaye series was executed in the Grande-Côte, a 150 km-long stretch of Senegal’s coastline between the northern outskirts of Dakar and the River Senegal estuary. Every now and then on this big expanse of beaches and sand dunes, one can make out structures made up of branches, plastic, fishing nets and various objects, rising up out of the sea, the sand and the vegetation. At first sight they look like formless, chaotic objects, tangles of branches and plastics that seem to have been washed up by the tides. But their composition, their vertical, somehow dynamic, presence in a place lashed by wind, water and salt invite curiosity as to what they are and what they are doing stuck out there in that particular place. Chaos provides opportunities to make wonderful discoveries, and little by little, to the observer’s eye, these tangled structures begin to take on more defined forms: animals, fantastic creatures, specific beings with arms, legs, heads, in movement, in groups, even foreshortened figures.
The Khamekaye are signs, great landmarks placed along the shore to mark places where there are villages further inland. They have a very specific purpose; a practical, domestic raison d’être. Their locations are not random, and their presence is not fanciful or unimportant. They make the locations of villages visible both from the sea (there are busy fishing zones all along this coast) and from the shore. Khamekaye is a word meaning “landmark” in Wolof, one of the most widely spoken languages in Senegal, and it is used exclusively to refer to these beach signals.
Measurements: W 180 x H 120 cm
