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Plexus International 1989
The Serpent, Act 5, Goree-Dakar

On January 3 of 1989, at the Door of No Return of the House of the Slaves of Goree, the fifth act of the Serpent was improvised without any authorization. The cancellation in Dakar of the Pan African Art and Cultures Festival FESPAC  busted the Plexus international event and, therefore, only few international participants arrived: Franco Meloni with his daughter Valeria, from Sardinia; Sandro Dernini, Anna Piccioni with a friend from Rome, and Willem Brugman from Amsterdam. As the symbolic shipping carrier of the Plexus voyage,  Kre M’Baye realized The Horse of Troy, a wood sculpture wood, to move from the Medina of Dakar to the island of Goree the numerous records, relics and artworks collected during the previous acts of the Plexus Serpent travelling event. Coming from the rocks at the ocean side, where slaves used to be deported to the Americas, Assane M’Baye performed the arrival of the toy boat Libertè de l’Art  In front the Door of No Return, an art installation was created with the records and relics of the Plexus travelling event, together with the art contributions of Luigi Mazzarelli, Ivan Dalla Tana, Micaela Serino, Gaetano Brundu, Anna Saba, Gabriella Locci, Antonello Dessi, Andrea Portas and Antonio Caboni. Awa M’Baye burned family incenses before the Door of No Return was crossed by Langouste M’Bow carrying inside the Horse of Troy of Kre MBaye, and one by one all other artworks. Then, other Plexus participants passed through the Door and presented the Plexus Art Slavery Manifesto to the curator of the House of the Slaves, Mr. Yosseph NDiaye. All groups shots made in New York, Rome, Carloforte, Cagliari, and Dakar, showed more than 400-500 artists gathered together in support to the Plexus art freedom call.  After, at the ANAST Cumba Castel gallery,  the Arturo Lindsay’s  ancestral messenger statuette was buried to be retrieved in the future when the World Art Bank project was opened. On the ferryboat, coming back to Dakar, it was performed the arrival of the magic figure of the Unicorn into the Plexus mythological art journey. In the Medina, at the Club Litteraire David Diop, Youssouph Traore by presenting the socio-cultural context of Senegal, and in particular of the Medina of Dakar and of Gorée, stressed also, together with Assane MBaye,  their survival local economy and the difficulties for them to continue Plexus activities in Dakar without any money.  Few days after, at the Jo Accam’s Agit Art Gallery, within a large installation made by Langouste MBow, it was held a press conference to present the Plexus art slaves boat journey. At the press conference, Sandro Dernini debated with the Minister Aliasse Ba about the Plexus controversial provocative concept to associate the art market to the slaves market and to propose the creation of an Art World Bank in Goree, symbolically placed in the House of the Slaves, as a sustainable development resource for African artists.  Sandro Dernini, by pointing at the center of the Langouste’s installation  the last purchases for millions dollars of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings sold at Sotheby and Christies art auction houses, recalled the life in poverty of Van Gogh. He argued on ethic implications in the current monetization of art and pointed out the controversial extraordinary price of $ 53.9 million, a month after the 1987 Wall Street crash, paid to Sotheby for the Van Gogh’s Irises, with a $ 27 million loan from the same Sotheby to the Australian buyer Alan Bond, to pump up art prices to beat the crisis of the marketplace. As a universal human right claim of justice, the Plexus World Art Bank project was conceptualized by Sandro Dernini as a strategic move to repatriate art and its economic value into the community, as well as a survival move for African and non western culture artists to resist against their slavery from the art world geography, built on a western concept of art through its categories and definitions. He stressed the need for the artists in the first person to develop their own independent productions such as the World Art Bank project.

 

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