Aliou Diack (b. 1987, Mbour, Senegal) develops a practice rooted in an intimate dialogue between nature, spirituality, and collective memory. Trained at the National School of Arts in Dakar, Diack’s compositions charged with visual intensity, inhabited by animal presences, mineral tones, and textured surfaces, evoke a primordial and instinctive universe.

Central to Diack’s practice is the use of natural pigments derived from plants and trees, many traditionally employed for medicinal or ritual purposes. Sourced from his native region in Senegal, these materials carry with them ancestral knowledge transmitted across generations. Prepared within his family, they embody a living heritage that the artist reactivates on canvas. 

His paintings trace a spiritual journey informed by Sufi traditions. The act of painting becomes ritualistic, repetitive, meditative, cyclical. He approaches the canvas as a field to be sown, layering pigments as a farmer would cultivate land, allowing texture to prevail over figuration and rooting each work in a tactile, almost earthly presence.

At the intersection of personal history and broader geopolitical realities, Diack’s practice engages questions of contemporary becoming of Senegal, of Africa, and of a globalised world. 

Positioning himself as an intermediary between humanity and the spirit of nature, Aliou Diack’s practice unfolds rhizomatically, deeply rooted yet expansively connected. His return to origins generates narratives that are intimate and universal, affirming art as a site where ancestral knowledge, spiritual consciousness, and contemporary urgency converge.