Visitors flocked to La Rotonde des Arts well after midnight during the Night of the Galleries, a highlight of Abidjan Art Week that showcased the city's vibrant cultural transformation. This annual event has positioned Abidjan as a growing regional arts capital, with late-night gallery tours and new venues drawing enthusiastic crowds.
Late-Night Gallery Tours and Expanded Reach
On a recent weekday evening, more than a dozen galleries and museums across Abidjan remained open until midnight, several hours beyond their usual closing times. Art enthusiasts participated in bus tours across the city, visiting venues during the Night of the Galleries. This after-hours special showcase was designed to allow people to drop in after work and fully experience Abidjan Art Week.
The tradition began in January 2024 alongside the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, hosted and won by Côte d'Ivoire. It continued during the art week's third edition, which ran from last Tuesday to Sunday. Since its launch, Abidjan Art Week has diversified its locations to include various parts of the city.
Key Venues and Artistic Diversity
Notable venues included La Rotonde des Arts centre for contemporary arts in the high-rise administrative district of Plateau and the Adama Toungara Museum of Contemporary Cultures (MuCAT) in the working-class neighbourhood of Abobo. Marie-Hélène Banimbadio Tusiama, a spokesperson for the art week, emphasized the event's mission.
"It is about creating opportunities to encounter art beyond specific occasions, and fostering the idea of visiting not only to buy but to immerse oneself in the artist's world," she said.
Abidjan's Rise in the West African Art Scene
After two civil wars impacted Côte d'Ivoire in the 2000s and 2010s, francophone West Africa's economic capital has been staking a claim to be at the centre of the contemporary West African art scene. It aims to rival Dakar, the region's default reference point for visual arts.
In Abidjan, home to many immigrants from within and beyond Africa, a contingent of local art collectors is on the rise. Since 2022, MuCAT has hosted the Africa Foto Fair, and the Marché des Arts du Spectacle d'Abidjan – Abidjan's answer to the Dakar Biennale – holds its 14th edition later this month.
Graffiti Festival and Public Art
A nationwide graffiti festival was instituted two years ago, marking a symbolic U-turn in a country where graffiti art was previously associated with vandalism. Artists once risked criminal prosecution, but today, colourful murals adorn the outside walls of La Pyramide building and several posh hotels in the Plateau district.
Growth and International Participation
Organisers of the art week expressed hopes for sustained growth of the local art scene, with a goal to scale it to new heights "independently of external approval." In this edition, artists from Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali were among those showing work across the city. The number of participating galleries more than doubled compared to previous years.
Yacouba Konaté, the event's founder and director at La Rotonde des Arts, highlighted the intentional inclusion of as many members of the public as possible. This approach challenges the perception that enjoying art is a strictly elite activity.
"We want this event to become increasingly visible and accessible to a broad public," he said. "One of the things we're trying to do is really communicate, to tell people that Abidjan is a cultural city and that there is a visual arts scene in Côte d'Ivoire and this scene is alive."
Tributes and Notable Exhibitions
This year, the week opened with a tribute to Simone Guirandou-N'Diaye, one of the earliest art historians in Côte d'Ivoire and a pioneer of gallery spaces that gave the scene its first institutional roots. She and her daughter Gazelle now run Galerie LouiSimone Guirandou, one of this year's participating venues.
At MuCAT, the exhibition Murmures d'Archives offered a different register of quieter, more archival art. The week closed there with an artists' workshop and a DJ set. In upmarket Cocody, a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Ouattara Watts at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury drew the Ivorian diaspora into conversation with the local scene.
Watts, who moved to New York in 1988 on the advice of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, explained his artistic vision. "My vision is not tied to any particular country or continent; it transcends borders and everything that can be found on a map," he said. "Whilst I use recognisable elements to make myself better understood, this is a project that goes far beyond that. It is the cosmos that I paint."
